


Descent

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Stargate Universe
Genre: Complete, Crossover, Rumbelle - Freeform, Rushbelle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 07:00:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 31,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an Ascended Ancient interferes in the affairs of the Destiny, Nicholas Rush has a major complication on his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> Much to my surprise, I am writing Rushbelle. I know I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't be enjoying it. But there's something deeply delicious about writing angry, smart, Scottish people. There aren't enough of them.

The first time Rush saw the Ancient, it was barely a flicker in the corner of his eye.

Of course, with the ship coming apart around them, a flicker at the corner of his eye was sometimes all he got as warning before everything went tits up and the consoles blacked out for an hour. 

He was fairly sure it was female, though with Ancients, it was difficult to be certain, and it was definitely humanoid. It was barely a shimmer, an outline, like a badly-rendered film. It flickered and wavered for a moment, then it was gone. 

He watched the spot where it had been for three minutes, and when there was no sign it was coming back, he returned his attention to the console, his hands darting over the screen. His headache was verging on constant, so he put it down to that: exhaustion and lack of caffeine playing tricks on the mind’s eye.

He saw it again, four days later, and this time, there could be no denying there was something there. It was glowing, taking true human shape, and for a moment, he saw a face in the light.

Rush rubbed his eyes and when he lowered his hand, he was sure it would be gone.

It wasn’t.

It was a she, as he’d thought.

She was facing him over the console, clear blue eyes gazing at him. A cloud of dark curls were drawn back from her face and she lowered her head in a nod of acknowledgement. Rush swallowed hard, staring at her.

“Can I help you?” he asked hoarsely. His mouth felt dry and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten or drank anything. 

Her lips turned up at the edges, then she was gone, again.

For the first time in a week, Rush left the console to go and eat. 

Running on empty led to lack of brain function. He had to remember that. They’d lectured him enough about it after the embarrassing incident of collapsing. It also could lead to hallucinations when eyes and mind were tired. Food. Food would help, and then he could get back to work, undisturbed by imaginary glowing women in his space.

The third time, he had fallen asleep at his work station, sprawled over the data and translation he was working on. It wasn’t as if it was a deliberate act, but sometimes, he got caught up and forgot those basic human necessities. That was why Young tried to have someone there: to send him back to his room to ensure he got at least a little rest, but Rush worked better alone. 

Young still tried to push people into working with him, but somehow - he couldn’t help sneer at the thought - people couldn’t take criticism when it came to life or death matters. More often than not, he would be left to his own devices, and that suited him perfectly.

Except on occasions when he woke up with memo-notes stuck to his face, his eyes glued shut with sleep and a feeling like tar and dust in his mouth.

He opened his eyes, squinting, and found blue eyes watching him again. The Ancient was still semi-transparent, and was crouched beside the desk, her head to one side. For some reason he couldn’t understand, she was looking at him with something like concern, which didn’t make any sense. The Ascended Ancients were meant to be above emotions, and they definitely weren’t meant to give a damn about some scientist who fell asleep on his desk while playing with one of their long-abandoned ships.

Rush pushed himself upright, and dragged both hands over his face, then pushed them through his hair. His eyes were as dried out as his mouth, and he winced as every joint in his back crackled from shoulder down to pelvis.

He looked sidelong.

She was still there, gazing at him.

Just to be sure, he knuckled both eyes, just in case he was seeing things again. It happened from time to time, though it wasn’t something he was about to admit out loud to anyone, especially since they would drag him away from the consoles, where he needed to be.

She was still there when he lowered his hands.

“You’re in my workspace,” he said to her. “It’s getting distracting.”

Her lips twitched, just a little, and she was gone as if she had never been there.

The next time she showed up, he pretended not to notice, and wondered idly if she would just vanish if she went unacknowledged. He was drumming at the console distractedly, watching the information flow and shift, and suddenly, it was illuminated even more.

Rush wondered if it was some kind of heresy to ask an Ascended Higher Being to stand still by the screen because they provided better light than a lithium-battery powered torch. 

He turned, and she was right by his shoulder, not quite touching, but gazing at the screen with intense concentration. Her features had more definition now, as if each visit was making it easier for her to hold her shape. She looked young, but then, they could look any age they wanted to, and she looked kind, a small smile hovering about her lips. 

“What do you want?” he asked.

She ignored his question and instead reached past his hand and brushed a glowing fingertip to the console. A panel on the far side of the room lit up like the Blackpool sodding illuminations, and more information flooded the screen.

Rush’s mouth dropped open and he tapped rapidly at the console, verifying the new data, checking and rechecking to work out what she had done. It was flying by far too fast, and he pushed his glasses up, staring.

He was still there, bent over the console, trying to process the new data, when Eli barrelled into the room, graceful as a bull in a china shop. 

“Whoa!”

“Shut up,” Rush said tersely, his hands hovering just above the console. It was still going, the reconnected power supply linking in with automatic protocols, shutting down unnecessary systems and rebooting ones that needed to be kick-started with additional power.

“But there’s a…”

“Shut. Up.”

Eli’s voice shrank to a whisper, “Glowing woman. Right there.”

Rush bared his teeth. “Shut your bloody mouth,” he snapped without looking up. His head was spinning. She had done in one touch what he hadn’t been able to break through in almost a month and a half. 

Finally, the flood of information slowed to a trickle, and then was back to the usual steady stream of updates and relays.

Rush breathed out, laying his trembling hands against the edge of the console. “My God,” he whispered. “We’re online.” He turned to look at the Ancient, who was gazing back at him with that same small knowing smile. “Couldn’t just let me do it alone, could you?”

He could have sworn she laughed. A shimmering hand brushed his cheek, with a sensation not unlike the touch of the event horizon against his skin, and she was gone. The room seemed much darker suddenly. 

“Um. Rush?”

“Yes?” Rush said irritably, turning back to Eli. “What is it?”

“Uh.” Eli waved vaguely towards him. “Do you have glowing vanishing women around to help you often?”

Rush looked at the boy. For someone so intelligent, sometimes, he could be such an idiot. “If you’re referring to the Ancient who just graced us with her presence,” he said, “no. I don’t have them around often.”

To help, though.

He looked at the screen again.

She had unlocked some of the systems he had been trying to crack into for weeks.

An Ascended Ancient had delved into the affairs of mere mortals. He knew enough about Ascension to know that it was one of the cardinal sins, and yet, she had done it, bringing the ship back from the brink for them. 

If he didn’t acknowledge it, then maybe he could pretend she hadn’t done a thing, and there would be no repercussions for an Ancient who was acting in something that could only be generosity to those stranded on Destiny.

Young cornered him less than three hours later, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him back from all the new and wonderful data.

“What the hell’s going on, Rush?” he demanded. “We’ve got power back in some of the residential bays and Eli was babbling about some kind of glowing woman being in here with you?”

“You’re right about the power,” Rush said, shaking the man off to turn back to the console. “I had something of a breakthrough, and this woman Eli is talking about is nothing more than an apparition that sometimes appears here. It means no harm, I’m sure, but it’s an apparition, some trace of some programme long gone from the ship.”

Young stared at him. “An Ancient.”

“That, I couldn’t tell you,” Rush lied smoothly, lifting his glasses up to rub his eyes. “All I know is that sometimes, she makes her presence known and just as suddenly vanishes.” He gave Young a look. “Much like Eli, if I am to be honest, only she does so quietly.”

Young exhaled. “You should have mentioned this.”

Rush snorted. “You said,” he said, “to bring up anything that could be considered important. The fact I have a partially-manifested glowing woman serving as my reading lamp is hardly of great importance when it comes to the functionality of the ship.”

“Rush, an Ancient being present is what I would class as important,” Young snapped.

Rush slanted a look at him. “My oversight, then,” he said. “I’ll be sure to mention it, next time my walking torch pays me a visit.”

“You do that,” Young said evenly. He looked around the room. “You’ve got a lot more lit up in here than last time.”

Rush tapped the console. “As I said,” he murmured. “There was a breakthrough. We have access to at least four more systems, and hopefully, that will unlock access to more of them as we go.” He wanted to laugh, wanted to smile, but not ever in front of Young. “It looks like we’re good for the time being.”

“Good?” Young echoed. “You’re serious? There’s been that much of a breakthrough?”

“Do I come across as a prankster?” Rush inquired mildly. “I think not.”

Young glared at him, but Rush couldn’t care less. It felt as if a massive weight had been lifted from his chest and he spread his hands on either side of the console. It was going to be okay. At least for now, they had room to breathe and didn’t have to worry.

“If you don’t mind,” he said. “I think I may take the night off. Tell Eli he can supervise.”

He didn’t stop to see the look on Young’s face as he walked towards the door. His back ached, his head throbbed, and his hands were shaking from almost constant activity for the last twenty hours, but he felt at ease for the first time in days.

It was amazing how much dust could gather in a room he left unoccupied for a week. He shook out the cover on the bed and all but collapsed down into it, the last of his consciousness used to toss his glasses onto the heap of clothes on the floor.

He didn’t know how long he was out for, but it definitely wasn’t long enough. 

As rude awakenings went, Scott shaking him was high up the list.

Rush struck out wildly, startled, only to open his eyes and find Scott holding his wrist.

“Not a morning person, huh?” Scott said tersely. “Young wants you. Med bay. Now.”

Rush squinted at him. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s something that Young thinks you might be able to explain,” Scott said with that irritatingly cryptic military tone.

Rush thinned his lips and nodded. “I’ll be there momentarily,” he said, sitting up and glaring at Scott until the man left the room. It took him longer than he would like to dress. His hands were still trembling and not as coordinated as they needed to be if there was another system going into meltdown.

To his surprise, there were two marines posted at the doors of the med bay, which struck him as unnecessary. There were two patients who were hardly considered a threat by anyone’s standards, and if there had been another accident, he was sure Scott would have dragged him from his room, rather than waiting.

The doors slid open and he walked in.

Young was standing by one of the beds, and he turned as Rush approached. “We have a new passenger,” he said, his expression unreadable. 

Rush stared at him. Times like this, coffee would be good. “What?”

“A new passenger,” Young repeated, stepping back, revealing a pale, motionless woman on the bed, her eyes closed. Rush’s breath caught in shock. “Eli was kind enough to identify her as your pet lamp.”

Rush swallowed down a biting response, pushing past Young. “Where did she come from?”

“That’s what we were hoping you would be able to explain,” Young said. “Eli was working on the mainframe, turned around and tripped over her, unconscious on the floor. I don’t need to tell you what falling over a naked woman will do to the boy.”

Rush sank down to sit on the edge of the bed.

She was an Ascended Ancient.

She had broken the only rule they had to abide by, by interfering in the events on the ship.

He hesitated, then touched the back of her hand. She was cool, but he slipped his fingers to her wrist and could feel the slow, steady beat of a pulse against his fingertips. She was flesh and blood, and alive now.

No longer an Ascended being.

“Fucking hell,” he whispered.

“And that’s not what I wanted to hear,” Young said quietly to the ceiling. “Rush, explain.”

Rush tore his eyes away from the woman, the Ancient, and looked up at him. “I don’t know that I can,” he said. “I can hypothesize that she’s an Ancient. One of the Ascended ones.”

“She doesn’t look Ascended to me,” Young said, casting his eyes over the woman.

“No,” Rush said quietly. “Not anymore.” He rose from the bed on shaking legs. “We have an Ancient on board now. An Ancient who was Ascended, but chose to help up, and as you so astutely noticed, she’s not quite so Ascended anymore.”

Young ran a hand over his face. “Is this good or bad, Rush? Is she a threat?”

Rush bared his teeth. “What part of ‘chose to help us’ are you missing?” he demanded. “She gave up her immortality to _help_ us. Does that sounds like a threat to you?”

“That sounds like something too good to be true,” Young retorted.

Rush stared at him blankly, then nodded. “It could well be,” he said, “but until we know that, she helped us, so I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.” He nodded towards the doors. “I’ll keep an eye on her for now.”

“Don’t you have a ship to manage?”

Rush scowled. “In case you had forgotten, I was taking a night off,” he said. “I intend to stick to that plan. If Eli can pick his jaw off the floor, I’m sure he’ll be able to manage for the rest of the day.”

Young raised his hands. “Fine,” he said. “You can babysit the unconscious not-Ancient. Have fun with that. But if she does anything to screw us over, it’s your responsibility.”

Rush snorted. “Isn’t that the case with everything that goes wrong around here?” he said.

“Admitting it is the first step,” Young said, then turned and marched away.

Rush drew a breath, then turned to look down at the Ancient. She was still, completely, and looked like little more than a pale statue. Her hair was loose now, dark and wavy around her face, and her lips were unnaturally pale. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said that there was no life in her at all.

He sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, touched the chilly hand, then lifted his hand to brush against her cheek, as hers had brushed his.

Maybe she wouldn’t wake, he thought. Maybe this was the punishment of the other Ascended beings: strip her of her vitality and soul, and plunge her back into the real world with nothing but a shell of a body.

“Can I help you?” he asked softly, repeating that question he had first asked her so many days ago. Her lashes flickered, and he pulled his hand back from her face, leaning closer. “Can you hear me?”

With effort, her eyes slowly opened. 

They were even bluer than they had seemed, when she was a glowing spirit form, but they were unfocussed, hazy. She stared at him for a moment, then her mouth curled in the slightest of smiles, and her eyes fell shut again.

Rush let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.

This, he knew, was going to complicate matters.


	2. A Smaller World

Belle felt strange, light-headed.

On the edge of her consciousness, she could hear a steady rumble, and some part of her mind filled that information in with ‘ship’. She could remember, faintly, the vast vessel crossing through the stars. 

It was called Destiny.

A beautiful name.

Something drew her to it, though she couldn’t understand what, not until she was drifting - invisible and unnoticed as air - through the corridors and chambers. They were watchers, she and those who had Ascended. Ascended. She knew what that meant. She knew what it was to be one with the universe.

It was peace, perfection, and everything.

That was as she had always remembered and always known, until she found him.

He was bent over a console the first time she saw him, and for a moment, she felt as if her world was solid and hard and sharp around her. She remembered a face so like his face, gazing at a spinning wheel. She remembered eyes of brown. She remembered a world that once had no magic, and then had some again.

She remembered a name: Rumpelstiltskin.

She remembered love.

He looked at her, frowning, and she knew she must have been seen. 

She returned to the ether or nothing and all, the light and the peace, but time and again, his face drifted through her mind. It shaped the patterns around her, shifting them and changing them, until she knew she could not stay away.

The ship was easy to find, a breath exhaling in an otherwise still world. 

The ripples drew her in and she watched him again. He looked so alike, and yet, there was something that wasn’t him. It couldn’t be Rumpelstiltskin, that much she knew, but it couldn’t not be him, not when he was as sharp and curt as him. He spoke, then, and she couldn’t stand to stay, and yet, again, the ship, the man called her back.

The next time she saw him, he was slumped, exhausted, over his work. She remembered love for the man who did that, who wore himself to the bone, who was not - could not be - this man, and yet was so like him.

She remembered what it was to feel, a terrible weakness for an Ancient.

Detachment was said to be all, and yet, she could remember feeling and loving, and now, she could remember what it was to worry for the well-being of a man, this man fighting so hard to protect all those within the shell of the ship.

It was not him.

It could not be him.

But it was a man so like him that it hurt, and she could no more stay away, stay neutral, than she could cease to be.

She knew the ship. She knew every atom of it. She lived and breathed the world of it, and it lived and breathed with her. There was a time, when once, it would have seemed impossible, insanity, to know so much, but now, she knew and breathed and lived the very essence of the universe, and that meant she could help.

He saw her, he spoke to her, her asked of her, but she knew if he knew, he would know what terrible crime she was about to perform.

So she reached past him.

She touched the console.

She made herself part of his world for a moment, and that world glowed. 

He looked at her, stunned, awed, disbelieving. “Couldn’t just let me do it alone, could you?”

It was him again, but not, and she laughed to keep from weeping, touching the face that was not his, and returned whence she came. 

The world grew hard and cold around her. Knowledge seemed to be drawing away. The warming glow of everything was dimming, and she knew that her crime would be punished, but if he lived, if the ship lived, even for a little longer, then surely, that was worth all that it would cost.

If her crime was to feel, to care, then let them punish her.

And so, she woke to the hum of the ship’s engines.

Images, feelings, thoughts flickered back. Him. And Rumpelstiltskin. A world of darkness. Cold. Seeing a glimpse of his face, closer this time, hearing his voice, as it should have been heard, breathing.

Breathing.

Belle waited, listened, felt.

She was breathing once more, truly. She lived, flesh and blood and real once more.

She opened her eyes, and the world - so small, so little, no longer eternity - was narrowed to a room with walls of metal. She could smell a thousand different smells, each one rivalling the other for dominance. She could hear machines beyond just the engines too. She could taste stale air and dryness.

Belle turned her head slowly, her eyes acclimatising to vision again. It felt strange as the room swam in and out of focus. To be seeing, rather than feeling everything around her, was like a blindfold had been torn away from her eyes, but a muffler cast over her other senses.

She was on a bed, in a robe, under a sheet, and close to her hand, she could see a weary head was resting. She gazed at it, but her senses were not enough to show her the making of the man. She was human. Sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. That was all she had left now.

Her arm shook with effort, but she moved it, and brushed her fingers against dark hair.

He moved, and it was him, him with the face that she knew but didn’t, and the eyes she remembered, but couldn’t, and he sat up, caught her hand. He rubbed her palm between his, and she could feel the warmth of skin.

“There you are,” he said, staring at her. “You’re safe.”

“No,” she whispered, gazing at him. “I’m not.” Her lips trembled as she tried to remember what it was to smile. “I know where I am and it’s not safe. Not yet.” She fell back against the pillows, breathless. It was hard to speak so much, to use lungs long unused, to deal in words again. 

“Take it slowly,” he cautioned, patting her hand. He hesitated, then asked, “You… were an Ancient, weren’t you? Ascended?”

Belle closed her eyes. She remembered. She remembered what had led her to be where she had been. She remembered the words. The foolishness. The price. “I think so,” she breathed, in and out with each word. “I think I was.”

His hands were warm and rough around hers, but he set hers down, as if afraid to break her. “I’m sorry.”

Belle pressed her eyes shut tightly. Not those words, not from one who looked so like him, and yet wasn’t. “No.”

“No?”

She forced her eyes open to look at him, in spite of the wet trickles rolling down her temples to fall silently on the pillow. “I did this,” she whispered. “You have nothing to apologise for.”

He was looking at her, stricken, and she had to close her eyes again.

It was too similar, to alike, and the pain in her chest was too real.

Ancient. Ascended. No matter what she had been, for however long or however briefly, she was only Belle again now, and she was in a world that wasn’t hers, with a man who wasn’t hers, and it hurt, it all hurt. 

It was impossible to contain the tears, even if she had any strength left in her body. They fell hot and heavy and she couldn’t even find the energy to lift her hands to hide her face, to hide them from the man who had no idea why she wept.

All at once, there were arms around her, and she was cradled, like a child, and for a split-second, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t who she wished he was, and that he was holding her because he thought she was something that she wasn’t. All that mattered was that she was suddenly not alone.

“It’s all right,” he was whispering over and over against her hair, rocking her as if she was a babe in arms. “It’s all right. You’ll be all right.”

She heard the hiss of doors, heard footsteps, but could care less about any of it. He was warm and close and he felt safe in a way that even the ethereal space of eternity hadn’t. His fingers brushed the tears from her cheeks gently, and she could feel the tension radiate from him as someone approached.

“You should have called us the minute she was awake.” Male. Dominant. Leader. She could remember the flavour of the man who led the survivors on this ship, the shape of him, but the name eluded her.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, Young,” her man said, the same bitter bite in his voice as often slipped into Rumpelstiltskin’s, “she’s a little distressed.”

“And I apologise for that,” Young said, though he sounded anything but Young. Belle lifted her eyes, squinting, to looked at him. He was watching them, and even without the extra senses that Ascension granted, she could almost see the suspicion and doubt wrapping around him like a cloak. He inclined his head. “Ma’am.”

She tried to offer a smile, but she felt like gravity was finally catching up with her, weighing her down unbearably.

“Here.” Her not-Rumpelstiltskin arranged pillows behind her, propping her upright in a sitting position. He stayed beside her, for which she was grateful, his hand at her shoulder to keep her from falling. 

The other man took the seat her man had so recently vacated. Unlike hers, this one sat bolt upright, straight, stiff, formal. His face didn’t give anything away, not as mobile as her man’s, but she could still tell he was wary of her.

“Ma’am, do you know where you are?”

She managed to nod, just a little. “Destiny,” she said. “Prima seed ship of legion seven.”

His eyes flicked to the man at her side and back again. “How do you know that?”

Her breath trembled in her chest, painful and fluttering. “We see. Watch.” She could remember the motion of swallowing, but it felt so much more complicated, with breathing and talking all overlapping. “All we do.”

“Until you didn’t,” her man said quietly. 

Young looked at him, sharp and accusing, then back at her. “You helped us. You opened up more of them systems for us. Why?”

Belle stared at him blankly, then lifted one hand to blindly put it to her man’s chest. His heart was pounding fast. Not healthy, she knew. Worried. “He was tired. Always tired.”

Surprise was universal in expression and body language. Young was surprised. Her man was surprised. Sharp breaths, taken in suddenly, both so surprised. 

“You watched Rush?”

Words as names, names as words. It was confusing.

“I helped,” she said carefully, wearily, her head full of mist and exhaustion. “He was tired so I helped.” She felt like she was falling, and her man had his arms around her again, catching her and cradling her, and lowering her back to the bed. “Tired,” she whispered, her eyes half-closed. “So tired.”

“I’m not the only one,” her man said quietly. He brushed her hair back from her face. “Rest, if you can. We can talk more later.”

Her eyes were closed before his fingers drew away from her cheek, and she breathed out and in again, as sleep - real sleep - came for her.


	3. The Cost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. So the rating just jumped on this because Rush is a Weggie with a temper. Sorry about that.

Rush paced the corridor outside the medical bay.

The Ancient, the woman, barely more than a girl, was asleep. Or unconscious. The medics couldn’t be sure which. 

Some part of him had expected her to be as distant, calm and ethereal as the Ancients were always meant to be. He hadn’t expected the grief on her face. He hadn’t expected her to break down completely, to sob like a lost child in his arms. 

He pushed his hand through his hair.

“She shouldn’t be here,” he said, turning on Young, who was less than a dozen paces away, watching him impassively, unreadable as always. “She shouldn’t have been forced into the ship. Not because of me.” He kicked out at a wall panel with a snarl. “Not because I was fucking tired.”

“Do you know who she is?”

Rush exhaled short, sharp breaths. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t. I’ve never seen her before. I don’t know why she would give a damn. I don’t know why she noticed me. I don’t know anything about the bloody woman except that she’s here because I couldn’t keep my fucking eyes open for ten minutes.” He kicked the wall panel again with an explosive, “Fuck!”

“Rush,” Young’s voice was calm, steady. “You didn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to.”

“Well, thank you very much for making me not sound like some kind of sexual predator,” Rush snapped, whirling on him. He gestured to the door. “You heard her, Young. She said I was tired, so she helped. She helped, so she got thrown into this hell with all of us. She lost her fucking immortality, her Ascendance, because I had a fucking nap!” He slammed the side of his fist against the wall. “Stupid bloody woman.”

Young gazed at him. “She also said she chose to,” he murmured. “This isn’t your fault, Rush.”

“The hell it’s not,” Rush snarled, pushing away from the wall and pacing in a tight circle. “I can safely say that for the first time, this is definitely something that is my fault.”

The doors of the medical bay hissed open. Johansen stepped out, a glare twisting her face. “If you’re going to yell,” she said in a low, steady voice. “Take it the hell away from here. I don’t need your temper disturbing my patients.”

“I’m not going anywhere, until I know that she’s well,” Rush snapped.

“She’s incredibly weak,” Johansen said quietly. “Her body is behaving as if it hasn’t been used for a long time. Other than that, I can’t find a thing wrong with her. She looks young, and from all the checks I’ve been able to do, she seems to be healthy.”

Rush ran a hand over his brow. His hands were shaking even more than before, and not because of fatigue now. “I should get back to Eli,” he decided. “I…” He walked in a circle again, his head in a whirl. “She’s given us new information. I won’t have it be in vain.”

“Rush.” Young caught him by the arm. “She helped because you were tired. Go. Rest. You sure as hell look like you need it.”

Rush stared at him. “You think I can rest? Now?” he demanded.

Young glanced at Johansen. “TJ, you got tranqs?”

Rush shoved his finger in the man’s face. “I will be with Eli,” he snarled, “in the console room. That woman gave up everything to make sure we could get somewhere. You even think about doping me, and I will beat seven shades of shit out of you.”

Johansen put her head to one side, watching him. “I don’t think they’d work with that amount of adrenaline in his system,” she said mildly.

Young looked down at Rush. “Fine. Go to work. Get some rest when you can.”

Rush scowled at him, whirling around and stalking off down the corridor. He punched at a couple of panels in passing, but even that didn’t help in any way except bruising his fists. The bloody woman should have kept her nose out of it.

Eli looked up from the consoles in surprise when he stormed in. 

“Uh. Hey. Did they tell you about…”

“The descended Ancient?” Rush snapped, shoving him aside. “Yes. They might have brought it to my attention.”

“Is she…”

Rush had him pinned to the nearest wall in a heartbeat. “Yes, she’s a fucking Ancient,” he growled. “Yes, she’s now human. Yes, she came onto the ship and is here to stay. Yes, she’s the same one who was in here this morning. Yes, she’s well. Any other questions you have are irrelevant, so I would appreciate it if you would shut the hell up.”

Eli stared at him warily, then nodded. “Just asking,” he murmured. He cautiously pushed Rush’s hands away from his shirt. “Night off’s cancelled, huh?”

Rush turned back to the consoles, bracing his hands on the nearest one. “Yes.” He tapped the screen with his fingertips, then stopped, leaning heavily on it. His legs felt like they were melting away beneath him.

Eli was silent for a moment, then he asked quietly, “Rush, are you okay?”

Rush pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “No. I’m not.”

The boy was by his side in a moment, one hand under his elbow. “Come on,” he said, steering him over towards one of the storage units that served as seats. “Sit down for a second. You’ll feel better.”

“I’m not an invalid,” Rush said irritably.

“Could have fooled me,” Eli retorted, and Rush looked at him blankly. He didn’t even have anything he could think of to say, and that made him realise just how damned tired he really was.

He sat, rubbing his eyelids with forefinger and thumb. He didn’t need to lower his hand to know that Eli was staring at him as if he was on a hair-trigger. “Get back to work,” he muttered, waiting until the boy moved away before lowering his hand.

Rush could practically feel the boy watching him, reflected in the consoles, and he straightened up, his shoulders cracking. 

“Have you found anything useful?” he finally asked, rising, when his legs didn’t feel like they might give way in protest. “Or did she distract you too much?”

“Anything useful?” Eli looked at him incredulously. “She pretty much handed us half the ship on a silver platter.” He pointed to one of the screens. “This area was blocked off because of gases. The filtration system is working again, and siphoning off anything toxic. That flashing bit over there is the shield restoring to full power. Turns out we were only running at half for most of the ship.”

“So, she hasn’t really done much, then,” Rush said dryly.

“Silver platter, Rush!” Eli pushed him up to the console and pointed. “I’m having trouble with some of this, but that code there, is that something to do with navigation?”

Rush nudged his glasses up his nose and stared at the screen. “We’ll have to do some checks and recalibrate the data,” he said slowly.

“That’s a yes, isn’t it? We might be able to steer the ship?”

“I didn’t say that,” Rush said, raising a hand to stifle Eli’s inevitable whoop of glee. 

“But you didn’t not say it,” Eli retorted. 

Rush’s eyes scanned over the screens, one after the other. “There are still locks in place,” he said, his voice sharp. “You know we can’t just assume it’ll open up for us easily. Checks first, then we’ll see what we have.”

“But it’s better than it was,” Eli said, and he was grinning like a kid at Christmas. “Even I can tell that.”

Rush looked up and around at the consoles. “Yes,” he agreed. “It’s better.”

It was the cost of those changes that worried him.


	4. Reassemble

Night and day were impossible to tell apart within Destiny.

In another shape, in another life, Belle knew time meant nothing, but in the world where people lived and breathed, time was everything. Time made existence worth something: to live to see the next day, to celebrate the passing of another year. Time was important.

When she woke, the medical officer, TJ, told her it was early in the morning.

She knew it would be strange to get used to working within hours again, but she had done it before.

Her reflexes were tested, and her limbs moved more easily. She managed to stand on her own two feet, and with the woman holding her hands, took careful steps across the room. It was overwhelming. The sensation of the movement beneath her feet, every vibration of the engine, the cool of the metal.

When she sat down, gasping and breathless again, she managed to smile weakly to assure the medic that she wasn't in pain.

Senses would take getting used to again.

It was one thing to hear, to see, to smell, to taste, to feel.

It was another thing entirely to have them all happening at once.

In that space of nothing and everything, there was no such sensation, and now, it was dizzying in its intensity.

"It looks like you'll be fine," TJ assured her. "There's nothing wrong with you physically, except you're just a little out of practise with using everything together."

Belle nodded, breathing in slow and deep until her head cleared. "How do you do it?" she asked. "How can it be simple?"

"Just let your body do what feels right," TJ suggested. "Most of the problems you're having, breathing and swallowing, are automatic from birth, so you just have to let your body do it's thing."

Belle nodded, pressing her hand to her chest. Her heart was pounding rapidly beneath her palm. She wasn't sure if that was normal, or if it was erratic. Everything felt so strange. She lowered her hand, trembling a little, to her lap.

"They'll bring us some rations in a while," TJ said. "I called on Young to let him know you're up. He'll want to talk to you, if you feel up to it."

"The leader?" Belle said.

TJ nodded. "He just wants to be sure of who you are."

Belle looked down at her hands. They looked small, fragile. "I can try to explain," she said quietly. She looked up. "The other man. Who is he?"

The woman frowned. "I thought you knew?" she said. "You said you helped him."

"I helped him because he was tired," Belle murmured, "I don't know him."

"His name's Rush," TJ said. "Nicholas Rush."

"Nicholas Rush." Belle rolled the name around in her mind. 

It fitted. Rush. To rush. To make haste. He did. She remembered watching him move around the consoles. In the eyes of the Ascended, people seldom made impressions, but the air about him fizzed with intensity and energy, even when he was exhausted. That was what caught her notice, even before the shape of him - as humans would see him - reached her awareness.

She looked at TJ. "Did he rest?"

"I think so," the other woman said. "Not as long as you did, but that's his way."

"Stubborn," Belle murmured. 

So like another she once knew. 

She tried to crush down the thought. She could be anywhere in time and space. She had never found what was missing. Nicholas Rush, on the Destiny, in the solitary end of the universe, was the closest she had found to him. He might be dust in the wind, ashes, nothing anymore.

The door of the med bay hissed open, the sound deafening, and Belle jumped, her breathing stuttering.

"Easy, Belle, easy," TJ said, catching her hand. "In and out. In and out."

Belle nodded, trying to slow her breathing again. She looked towards the doors. Young was standing there, watching them and he offered her a small nod, a greeting she assumed. She managed a shaking smile. "Hello."

He approached, carrying a bowl. "Breakfast," he said. "It's not much, but we're a little short on variety at the moment."

She nodded gratefully. "Not a planned venture," she said, carefully breathing for each word. "always causes problems with supplies."

He drew up a chair by her bed. "Do you think you can manage yourself?" he said, offering the bowl.

Belle hesitated. Her fingers still shook, but she managed to lift the bowl into her lap. With care, she managed to scoop some of the pale paste with the flat metal utensil. Young watched her patiently, as she tried to remember the process of chewing and swallowing. It was hardly necessary, given the consistency of the paste, but it felt important to remember. There was flavour too, and she found herself remembering a childhood she had long forgotten.

"Thank you," she said, when she had scraped the bowl as clean as she could. It would have been rude to leave food to waste when there was little enough to spare.

"The least we can do," Young replied with an attempt at a smile. "After all, you've apparently restored accessibility to parts of the ship we didn't even know were there."

Belle nodded. "Good," she said softly. "That lock was a safety mechanism, in case of enemies." She paused to breathe again. "Dangerous part of the universe. Didn't want it to be easy." She met Young's eyes. "Put it into the right hands."

Young looked surprised. "You believe we're the right people to take care of this ship?"

Belle nodded slowly. In and out. Breathe. In and out. "There's passion," she whispered. "Burns with it. For knowledge. Loves the ship, what it means, what it can be."

"You mean Rush?" 

She looked up at the man. "Rush," she agreed in a whisper.

Young glanced at TJ. There was some hidden meaning in the look which Belle couldn't understand. Her head was feeling light and she leaned back against the back of the bed. 

"You really think Rush is the right person to be put in command of the ship?" Young finally asked.

Belle's eyes were closed, but she allowed herself a small smile. "He isn't in command," she murmured. She opened her eyes enough to look at him. "You command. The ship is his. The people are yours. Never give him the people. The ship is enough. May not listen. May not follow. But will do right for the ship and those in it. Would kill himself trying to do right for it."

Young leaned back in his seat, his hands folded in front of him. "Sounds like you have a measure of him."

Belle breathed slowly, in and out. "I know the type." She gazed at him. "You don't trust him."

Young inclined his head just slightly. "He's a difficult man," he said diplomatically. "Definitely marches to the beat of his own drum."

Belle laughed quietly, closing her eyes again. "The brightest minds always do."

Young was silent for several minutes, then asked quietly, "Is that why you chose to help him?"

Belle's hands were resting in her lap and she drew her fingers together, lacing them one over the other. "I lost something important once," she murmured, "before I was here, before I was there, when I lived. I had... forgotten. He reminded me. Of what it is to put all you have into something, to take risks, to be brave."

Young was quiet for so long that Belle opened her eyes to look at him.

"You say you lived," he murmured. "Do you know when? Where?"

Images flicked through her mind: a palace overlooking the sea, a mysterious castle with towering walls and high windows, a cell with a heavy iron door and no way out, a house that was for a brief period a home.

"That's a... difficult question," she said quietly. "It could have been moments. It could have been centuries." She turned her hands over in her lap. "Time passes differently when you have no form."

Young leaned closer, gazing at her not without kindness. "Now that you're here," he said, "can you return to what you were?"

Belle looked at him, then looked at her hands. "What has been done cannot be undone," she said quietly. A well-intentioned kiss, a carelessly-spoken wish, a touch to a console to assist. So many things that should not have been done or said, but had been and would remain so.

His hand touched her shoulder, briefly, comfortingly. "I'm sorry you've ended up trapped here with us."

She raised her eyes to his. "It's only a trap," she replied quietly, "if you have nowhere to go."

"And we have somewhere to go?"

She smiled at that. "The stars."


	5. Looking Onward

Nick Rush didn't consider himself a coward.

He thrived in confrontation, in meeting problems head-on, in arguing his corner. He wasn't afraid of death or danger, because he had seen both and they no longer held any terror for him. If death came, it came. If danger threatened, it would be dealt with.

None of that, though, prepared him for being the cause of an Ancient losing their immortality. 

He wasn't a coward, but he hardly left the console room in the days after she appeared on the ship. Young came and talked at him, but he ignored the man. There was too much too be done, too much new information to process, too great a chance of running into her and seeing what he had reduced her to.

Sometimes, he remembered to sleep. 

That was the reason, after all.

She wanted him to rest, so he rested, and then he worked until his vision blurred and his eyes were dry. He ate, slept little, worked.

TJ stuck her nose in once in a while, asking him if he planned on dropping by the med bay, but he waved her away. The information. He had to process the new data and try and find the key to unlocking the navigation system. That had to be a priority. They were running low on supplies. They had to head in a new direction. That was important. More important than anything.

Unfortunately, the source of the new data kept creeping to mind, and he caught himself remembering tear-filmed blue eyes. 

The data was valuable. There was no denying that. The more that unfolded, the more he knew they owed her. There were still codes and locks in place, of course. It was a secure system, incredibly complex and layered with safety protocols. Still, she had decoded the base code, which meant that a whole new range of possibilities were at least open to view.

Rush worked ceaselessly.

Eli came and went, as did Young, and others.

He hardly paid them any mind, moving from screen to screen. 

Once, there had been a time when he didn't have a headache. He could vaguely recall the sensation. Now, it was constant, but now, he needed it to be there. It kept him conscious, made him focus. The sooner he solved the problems and riddles of the ship, the sooner he could get some real rest.

He had his watch set to remind him to head down for rations, but that was a brief pause, barely necessary. He'd tried to persuade them to just bring his ration to him, but Young put out an order that he wasn't to be fed. He would come for food just like everyone else, and he would be happy about it.

Rush swore the air blue.

The only consolation was that she wasn't there.

She was still in the medical bay, so he could act as if her intervention hadn't happened.

As long as he didn't see her face, he didn't have to feel guilty about condemning her.

He was alone in the console room in what was probably the night. He wasn't sure anymore. It had been a while since he'd actually paid attention to the cycle of hours. All he knew was that he finally had some peace, and no one was telling him to sit down or that he looked like shit. Of course he did. They were living on protein slop in the depths of space, with no sunlight and insufficient vitamin D. They all looked like shit.

The doors hissed open behind him, and he exhaled through his teeth. 

"What now?" he snarled.

"You haven't stopped."

His hand froze over the console at her voice. He stared blindly at the data scrolling across the screen, then lowered his hand to grip the edge of the console. "You're up?"

He could hear her taking careful steps into the room. "So are you."

He closed his eyes for a moment, then took a breath and turned to face her. She was standing half a dozen paces away, and from the looks of things, had been dressed in any clothes people had to spare: a sweater, pants, boots that were too big. She looked like a child dressing up in mother's clothes. Her hair was drawn back in a braid, and her face was pale even by the light of the consoles.

A small, tentative smile crossed her lips. "Hello."

Rush stared blankly at her. "What are you doing here?"

She wrapped her arms around her middle. "Looking," she said quietly. She took two more steps towards him, her eyes on his face. "They said you weren't working so much. I didn't believe them."

"Well, to be honest," he said, his hand still braced on the console behind him, "that's none of your business." It felt safer, better to stand behind a wall of hostility. That way, she might leave him be to get on with things.

"No," she agreed. "It's not. But I don't believe you're working at your best when you haven't slept for eighteen hours. How is that helping anyone?"

He snorted. "I'm working as well as ever." He waved vaguely to the door. "You should return to the med bay. You'll have TJ climbing the walls if she gets there and finds you gone."

"I told her where I was going," the woman replied, infuriatingly calm. "I wanted to talk to you."

He turned away, trying to keep his hands from trembling by pressing them to the console. "I have a lot to do here," he said tersely. "You've given us a lot of new information to deal with."

She was suddenly beside him and one small, cool hand touched his forearm. "And it can be dealt with," she said, looking up at him. She was smaller even than he'd realised, and he looked at her blankly. Her fingers slipped down his wrist and took his hand. "Walk with me."

"I have work..."

Her blue eyes fixed on his face. "It can wait. It would have waited before. You're ahead of the position you would have been in ten days ago." Her fingers squeezed his. "Please. Walk with me."

"Why?" he asked, his voice hoarser than he would have liked.

"Because you're the one person on this ship who doesn't stare at me as if I just fell out of the sky," she replied.

"Technically, you did," he pointed out.

Her mouth turned up in a smile. "Technically," she agreed. "But you glare at me, just like you glare at everyone else. Consider it the need for a breath of fresh air."

He frowned at her. "You're not going to leave me alone, are you?"

"No," she said at once. She tugged his hand again. "Show me the ship."

"You're sure you should be up and walking around?"

Her blue eyes gleamed at him. "I could ask you the same question. I, at least, have been sleeping."

"That's not what I meant," he snapped.

"I know," she said. 

He exhaled noisily. "Fine. I'll show you the ship, then you're going back to quarters."

It wasn't half the trouble he imagined it would be. She seemed as fascinated by the vessel as he was, and for once, it was satisfying to have someone who could appreciate the way it was constructed. When she paused at a control panel, brushing her fingers over the metal, he wondered just how much she might still know. 

It was slow progress, her steps still faltering occasionally. Out of some long-forgotten sense of chivalry, Rush let her lean on his arm. She paused from time to time, if she wanted to ask a question or speak at all. An Ascended being of pure energy returned to a human body, he realised. Of course it would be difficult adjusting. 

He slowed his pace, and he saw a brief, grateful smile cross her lips. 

When they reached the viewing deck, she stopped short in the doorway, her breath catching.

"Are you all right?" Rush asked, concerned.

She nodded, her eyes fixed on the galaxy rushing by. "This is beautiful," she breathed out. "Being part of it is nothing compared to seeing it like this." She walked forward slowly, breathing deeply, her hands reaching blindly for the rail. He came to stand beside her, looking at her pale face, the wonder in her eyes, as she looked out at the stars sleeting passed.

"What was it like?" he asked quietly. 

"To be as I was?"

He wrapped his hands around the rail, nodded. "Compared to humanity?"

She smiled out at the sky. "Different," she said. "It's impossible to express how small you feel, in a universe that is so vast. You're a dust mote in a beam of sunlight." She looked at him. "There are no senses, no emotions, only everything. You're part of it all and it is part of you."

He stared at her. "And now, you're limited to this shape?" he said bitterly. 

Her hand moved on the rail to cover his. "No guilt," she said softly. "I have been human before. It isn't as painful as you seem to believe." She offered him a small, gentle smile. "I knew the price, when I offered my help. You asked for nothing. You forced nothing. I made this choice."

"You said you intervened because I was tired," he said tersely, looking down at her hand over his.

"That was only a small part of it," she said quietly. "My mind was made up by many things." She squeezed his hand so lightly, it was barely any pressure at all. "No one decides my fate but me." She nudged him with her elbow. "Especially not such a grump."

One side of his mouth twitched up. "I don't know what you're babbling about."

"Of course you don't," she said dryly, her eyes dancing with amusement.


	6. Interference

Belle had abandoned her shoes.

No, they weren’t her shoes. She had borrowed them, and they were far too big. It felt silly to scuff around in them when the ship was warm enough to go barefoot. She liked to feel the hum of the engines rising through the floor, even if no one else seemed to notice them.

It was easier to walk without the hindrance of heavy, military-issue boots as well, and she all but danced from console to console. She basked in the glow of flickering information, the codes and symbols sparking off memories.

It felt strange, to look at a console, aware that she had never seen one in her human existence, yet knowing instinctively what was right and wrong about the information on the screens. Her fingers danced across the panels and buttons, a virtuoso at work, even though her conscious mind had little awareness of _why_ she was going the things she was.

The doors hissed open.

“Rush, there’s some weird…” The speaker was a young man, and stopped dead at the sight of her. “You’re not Rush.”

She looked over her shoulder with a smile. “I can see why you’re allowed to work with him,” she said, her hands pausing for a minute. “I think he’s still asleep, but I didn’t want to look in and check. You know how impossible it is to make him rest.”

“Uh, yeah.” He frowned. “Does he know you’re in here?”

Belle couldn’t help laughing. “What do you think?” she said. She turned from the consoles and was halfway to a habitual curtsey before she stopped herself. “I’m Belle.”

“Eli,” the young man replied, looking around the consoles warily. “Eli, is me, I mean.” He shifted from foot to foot. “You really shouldn’t be touching anything without him here. He goes kinda crazy when people do that.”

“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Belle replied, turning her attention back to the consoles. “I’m very good at data-sifting, and it’s my fault there’s so much more work for you.”

“I guess,” Eli said reluctantly. “Does Colonel Young know?”

Belle glanced at him, raising her eyebrows. “Does he know what these screens say?”

“Well, no.”

“Then he doesn’t need to know,” she replied reasonably.

Eli was silent for a moment, then approached her at the console, leaving the doors wide open. It let a breeze in, though where it was coming from, Belle wasn’t sure. “What are you looking for anyway?”

“I’m not looking for anything,” she replied. “Like I said, I’m sifting the data, sorting it into clearer subclasses.” She smiled at him, and was amused when he ducked his head. “It’s all in one massive cluster at the moment. That’s why it was taking so long to look through it.”

“You don’t remember how to unlock the navigation, do you?” he asked hopefully.

Belle ran her fingertips down the edge of one of the screens. “I don’t… remember any of this, exactly,” she replied. “I was never in a spaceship when I was in this shape before. But I do know the system and the way it should respond.” She sighed, tapping a series of seemingly random symbols. “Unfortunately, even if I do everything in the right order, I’m just organising it. I could be right on top of the navigation control, and miss it.”

Eli’s face fell. “Oh, right,” he said. He laughed self-consciously. “Sorry. I know it shouldn’t bother me so much, especially after everything you did to help us get all this new information, but it’s kinda hard knowing that even with the code gone, we’re still screwed.”

“Less so than before,” Belle pointed out with a smile. “As you said, you have all this new information. I might not be able to find what you need, but I don’t doubt that it’s there, waiting to be found.”

“Then that’s where we come in.”

Both she and Eli turned at Rush’s voice.

He was standing at the open doorway, his arms folded over his chest. How long he had been watching them, Belle couldn’t be sure.

“Morning!” Eli said with forced cheerfulness. “Belle was showing me what she was doing.”

“Yes,” Rush said mildly. “I spotted that.” He walked into the room, his arms still sternly folded. 

For a moment, Belle felt like a child awaiting a scolding, but she didn’t let it show. Instead, she tilted her head with a smile. “Your filing system is awful,” she said. “I was tidying things up, so you could find them more efficiently.”

“My filing system,” he replied dryly, “was not yet existent, as the volumes of data were too great to be feasibly managed.”

She shrugged with a quiet laugh. “It’s easy when you’ve seen it from the inside,” she said, crossing the floor to tug on his wrist. He reluctantly unfolded his arm and let her lead him to the console, where the information was being sectioned off. “Here. If there’s anything about the layers system I’ve put in place, you can undo it, but I’ve gathered information about each system in a cluster, which should make it easier to navigate it.”

“It makes a lot of sense,” Eli said helpfully. “Look.” He tapped at the screen and brought up the lists of data relating to propulsion.

Rush brushed him aside, withdrawing his wrist from Belle’s grip, and took his place at the console. He slipped his glasses on, bending over the screens, and Belle watched his hands dance on panels and buttons.

He touched it, she noticed, as if he worshipped it.

That was why she knew he was the right man to guide the ship.

“Well?” Eli said some moments later.

Belle smothered a laugh at the frown that creased Rush’s brow.

She knew he had been checking each cluster, and she knew that there was nothing wrong in the way that she had broken down the data. She also knew that if there was one thing that Rush must be used to and tired of, it was people hurrying him.

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” he said, turning his attention on the unfortunate Eli, “there is rather a lot of data to check and ensure it has been sifted correctly. Asking me if I have finished less than five minutes after I arrive is verging on the pointless.”

Eli rolled his eyes, clearly used to Rush’s barbs. “I’d say you got out of the wrong side of bed this morning, but I don’t think you have a right side,” he said. He shot Belle a quick smile. “I’ll get out of your way. You’ve got this under control.”

Belle had to bite her lip to keep from laughing when Rush looked at him, his expression not unlike an affronted cat. 

“The work isn’t even half-done,” he said indignantly. “But given how useful you have been to our guest so far, do run along, Eli.” He waved the younger man away. “I’m sure we’ll be able to cope.”

“I know she will,” Eli said with cheerful insolence, though he hurried towards the door much more rapidly than he’d entered, followed by Rush’s steely glare. It hissed shut after him and Rush turned his scowl back to the screen.

Belle crossed her arms, propping them on the lower edge of one of the consoles. “You like being the scary one, don’t you?” she said. “Always angry and unpredictable.”

“I like to work and know it’s being done well,” he countered, his eyes flicking over the screens. 

“And that means trusting no one but yourself, because no one could possibly know all that you know,” she murmured, watching him. His eyes flicked towards her, briefly, then back to the screens. “Don’t imagine you’re the only man who believes he is the font of all knowledge, Nicholas. You might be intelligent, but that doesn’t mean you’re smart.”

“And insulting me is meant to endear you to me, is it?”

Belle laughed. “No,” she said, “but the fact I’ve clearly done something right when I tidied up the data for you is.” She lifted one hand to cup her chin in it and gazed at him with a knowing look. “Would you like me to get on with the work?”

He was silent for several minutes, fingers moving in a blur over keys and screen. 

Belle waited patiently, and finally, he paused.

“You seem to have overlooked navigation, the filtration system on the west bow and at least half a dozen other systems,” he said without looking at her. “If you think I’ll let you walk out of here and leave a job unfinished, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Belle pressed her lips together to hide a smile. “I’ll get right on it,” she said.


	7. Dreams

Rush wasn’t distracted.

Well, not entirely.

It was impossible to ignore the fact that his new research partner was an attractive young woman, just as it was impossible to ignore the fact that her intelligence far outstripped her beauty. It was a rare combination. On top of that, she was the only person on the ship who didn’t seem to fear his wrath, question his motives or even quail beneath his blistering insults.

When he looked at her, there was something older, wiser, and so much calmer gazing back that he knew any attempts to anger or scare her off would be in vain.

The reason he wasn’t distracted was that when they worked side-by-side, he didn’t have a chance to be distracted by her. There was too much information washing over him, the screen reeling with statistics, figures, intelligence. 

Her fingers danced as deftly as his on the consoles, the only person who could match his pace and knowledge, and the only person he knew could be trusted not to do something catastrophic that would bring the ship crashing down around them.

It meant he was only really distracted when she declared they were done for the day.

Somehow, he would find himself sitting with her on the viewing deck, as they had their evening ration. Then they would be walking through the ship, checking on the changes they had made, and would always end up back at his door, no matter which route they took. 

She had a guileless smile, and those wide, blue eyes that promised it had all been a complete coincidence, but since he was there now, he might as well get some rest. And then, she would kiss him on the cheek, and he would stare at her, and let himself be ushered into his room.

That was distracting.

The kiss on the cheek especially.

It had been a long time since anyone had considered him deserving of so much as a look, let alone a modest little peck on the cheek.

It was an unnecessary complication.

Every night, he lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling, and told himself the next day he would go to the console room, tell her he could manage alone, and insist she go and deal with other things around the ship. 

Every morning, he reached the room, and she would be hard at work already, and his nerve shattered when she looked up and smiled.

She had managed to assuage the gnawing guilt that had troubled him about her arrival. 

Of all the people on the ship, she seemed the least distressed about their situation. Everything she did, she did with calmness and a smile that was so completely serene, he wondered if it was her own nature or the nature of ascension that made her so.

One morning, he arrived at the console room, and she wasn’t there.

It was so unlike her after weeks of her smile being the first thing to greet him, that he was immediately concerned. It could be something simple, that she had slept late or chosen to go for a walk before working, but something told him that wasn’t the case.

Ever since TJ had cleared her to leave the med bay and Young had granted permission for her to have a private room, she divided her time between working, his company or quietly retreating to her room. That was the first place he went, leaving the consoles untouched.

He knocked, and when there was no response, he opened the door, looking in.

The room was empty. It hardly looked as if anyone occupied it. The bed was neatly made, and the only sign of occupation was the book lying on the small cabinet beside it, a book she had borrowed from him.

Rush frowned, drawing back into the corridor.

He tried the mess hall, then the gate room, even the labs and med bay, until he realised he knew where she would always end up.

When the doors of the viewing platform opened, his heart sank. 

Normally, she would be standing at the rail, gazing out into the vastness of space, but there was no familiar silhouette, lit by the fleeting stars. 

Rush stepped into the room and looked around to be sure. She was there. She was sitting against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees, and for once, she looked as human and vulnerable as almost any other person on the ship, and that was so much worse, knowing how brave and strong she was.

“Belle?” he said quietly, approaching her.

She didn’t look up at him, staring blindly at infinity. “Sorry I wasn’t working,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, roughened, and when he crouched down beside her, he could see her face was reddened and her eyes swollen. She had been crying.

“Did something happen?” he asked, worried.

Her lips trembled as she tried to smile. “All the little human things have been coming back a piece at a time,” she said, blinking hard. Her eyes were shimmering with fresh tears, and they rolled down her cheeks, thick and heavy. “I dreamed for the first time.”

Rush sank down on his knees beside her. “A nightmare.”

She shook her head, lifting one hand to catch the tears, brushing them away. “Just a dream,” she said in a whisper. 

He hesitated, then reached out to smooth her hair comfortingly. “Was it terrible?”

She looked at him. “It’s always hard seeing what you’ve lost,” she said quietly, “being so sure it’s right there, tangible, touchable, only to wake up and find yourself alone.” She drew a quaking breath. “To know you can’t go back and that they’re gone and never coming back.”

Rush stared at her, then moved closer and wrapped his arm around her. “It’s shit,” he agreed hoarsely. She was stiff for a moment, then curled against his chest, hiding her face. He brought up his other hand to stroke her hair gently. “I’m not going to lie and tell you it gets easier.”

She laughed, but for once it was broken. “I know it won’t,” she breathed. “I’ve been here before.” She ran trembling fingers across her cheeks again, wiping away fresh tears. “At least then, I knew he was alive. Now, I don’t even know that.”

Rush closed his eyes in understanding and sympathy. “Your Ascension separated you?”

She nodded against his shoulder, her head heavy and warm. “It was his fault,” she whispered. “Not on purpose, but it doesn’t change the fact he made it happen.”

Rush looked down at her in confusion. “That you Ascended? Isn’t it a personal journey?”

She was still and silent, and gently pushed him back. “It’s complicated,” she said. She scrubbed at her eyes roughly. “The only blessing about Ascension was that it takes away the need for emotion. You could have been hurt so badly you feel you could die of it, but you don’t care anymore.” She laughed sadly. “Or you could have been happier than anyone else in the world, and it’s suddenly unimportant.”

“And now, you feel again,” he said, his voice tight. 

Her hand was suddenly on his thigh, squeezing hard enough to bruise. “Don’t you start feeling guilty again,” she said with surprising ferocity. “I would rather feel all the love and pain and grief that I knew as a human than a thousand years of being one with the cosmos.”

“I think that’s where we would differ,” he said quietly.

She looked up at him, her eyes clear and bright and penetrating. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find a way to be at one with all the knowledge in the universe. To find a way to be at peace. To Ascend.”

He schooled his expression into what he hoped was an unreadable one. “Perhaps. Knowledge is the most important thing in the world.”

Her tear-damped hand rose and brushed his cheek, and he had to close his eyes to avoid the compassion in her expression. “You poor, sad man,” she whispered. “You and I both know that it’s not.”


	8. Once Upon A Time

For the most part, Belle was content with her life on Destiny.

By the unlocking of the code, the ship was becoming more accessible, and some of the outer reaches were even becoming useful. The information that she continued to sift through was leading towards full control of the ship, and she knew that any suspicions of her motives had long since been allayed. 

She also had acquired several friends among the crew. Eli was a source of delight, his optimism and wonder at being in space refreshing. He would often seek her out when she and Rush weren’t together. That was rare, but somehow, the young man knew when Rush was preoccupied enough not to notice she was absent.

Rush, though, was her near constant companion.

Ever since the ability to dream had returned to her, he looked at her more closely when he arrived at the consoles in the morning. He was worried, she knew, that she was being troubled by the nightmares, though he knew enough not to ask for details anymore than she would ask about the wedding ring that still adorned his finger. 

Nightmares would have been refreshing. 

Her dreams of Rumpestiltskin were far more intense as anything that she had experienced while in Regina’s captivity, weeks, months, years, centuries, millennia ago. In that prison, she’d only had the memories of smiles and that one loving kiss. Now, they were the fragments of memories, of happy times, of embraces, of waking in one another’s arms.

Those were the worst moments of all: dreaming of warm arms and affectionate lips and a wiry body curved against hers, then waking to a lonely bed, no matter how tightly she tried to hold onto him. 

She woke in tears at least once a week, and on those days, he would take one look at her, and drop everything to make sure she was all right. It made it easier, his careful attentiveness, and they would be back to work within a couple of hours. 

Sometimes, though, sometimes the emotion was too hard to manage.

Only once did she just stay in her bed, drawing the covers up over her head and breathe the stale air. It was self-indulgent and pointless, but it was also human grief, and she knew she had to process it if she ever intended to live wholly.

She was unsurprised when he came to find her.

He always would.

It was tragic that no one else tried to get to know him, to understand what drove him. She knew it all too well.

He squeezed her shoulder through the blanket. “Belle.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I’m late.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I thought we might take a day off today.” She pushed down the blanket just enough to look at him. He was even more concerned than usual, frowning at her, his hand still on her shoulder. “You work too hard.”

Her lips trembled in a weak smile. “Hello Pot.”

She caught the flicker of a half-smile, but it was gone quickly. “Both of us, then,” he said. “I think we’ve earned it, and it’s about time Eli looked through some of that data that you sifted in his stead.” He inclined his head. “We can’t have the boy getting complacent, can we?”

“And what will we do, Dr Rush?” she asked, wondering if her voice sounded as hoarse to him as it did in her own ears.

He rubbed her shoulder gently. “Anything you please,” he said. “I’m feeling generous with my time, if you feel like my company.”

She pushed herself into a sitting position and put her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. He didn’t resist it, one arm going around her back, rubbing in wordless comfort, and she breathed in the scent of him. It wasn’t the same, not by any means, but it was strong and hardy and him, and she felt safe, knew she could trust him.

“Do you know what I miss?” she murmured.

He drew back to look at her. “What?”

“Music,” she replied quietly. “I used to like it.”

A true smile crossed his face. “Then this is your lucky day,” he said. He rose from the bed and offered her his hands. “Come along. I have something you might enjoy.”

Belle stared at him blankly, then put her hands in his and let him haul her upright. He kept a hold of one of her hands, leading her through the ship and back to his own room. Neither of them had commented on the fact that her room was one of the closest to his. Young’s sense of humour or TJ’s observations of them together, either could have been the cause.

“Here,” he said, motioning for her to sit on the chair by the bed.

“You have a chair?” she tried to sound teasing, but it fell flat.

He looked at her as if she were Eli. “Close your eyes.”

She obeyed at once. “Are you going to tell me what it is?” she asked, when he started moving around the room. “Or just put something unpleasant in my hands?”

“Your trust is overwhelming,” he said dryly.

She couldn’t help the small smile that crossed her lips. “I know you,” she said. “If you had something unpleasant, you would do it now out of spite.”

He snorted, then was quiet for a moment.

Belle laced her fingers together in her lap, her eyes still closed, then gasped in surprise when she heard the sound of a violin. She heard him approach, the creak of the bed as he sat down near her. She could feel the warmth of his knee close to hers, but she didn’t open her eyes, not quite yet. 

The piece of music was simple, but beautiful, a single violin playing a lilting melody.

When it ended, she sighed softly and opened her eyes. “That was beautiful.”

He was looking down, his face hidden in shadows. His forearms were resting on his knees, his hands tangled between them. His fingers were wound so tightly together that the skin was almost bone-white. “That was Gloria,” he said quietly. “My wife.”

Belle stared at him, stunned, and reached out blindly to clasp his hands. “Thank you,” she whispered. 

He raised his eyes to hers, unsurprised that they were bright with emotion. “You understand,” he said in a low whisper. She nodded. This wasn’t just for her anymore. It was for a man who had suffered as much as she had. Two survivors in a storm, where no one else knew what it was to be as they were.

Without a second thought, she rose from the chair and moved to sit beside him on the bed, wrapping her arms around him. His arms went around her too, and for sheer practicality’s sake, they sprawled back on the bed. Her fingers smoothed his hair, just as his fingers tangled into hers. There weren’t tears. Too many had already been shed. Instead, they just held onto one another, until they were breathing the same rhythm, soft, slow, shallow.

Finally, sprawled on her side beside him, she watched his face. “What happened?”

“Cancer,” he said quietly. He looked at her. “Don’t say you’re sorry. Everyone says that.”

“I won’t,” she promised quietly. She moved one of her hands to rest over his heart. “She’s still in here, isn’t she?”

He didn’t reply, but smiled briefly, sadly, nodded. He looked back at the ceiling, and it was several moments before he asked, “You?”

“Complicated,” she said in a whisper. “You’ll probably think it’s crazy.”

“I’m stranded on a spaceship that should be rights be dropping out of the sky from old age,” he murmured. “If that isn’t crazy, then I don’t know what is.”

“What about magic?” she murmured, toying with the front of his shirt.

“Magic?” He tilted his head to look at her. 

She nodded. “The fairytale kind,” she said quietly. 

“I’m not sure I follow,” he said, frowning.

Her lips trembled when she smiled. “I think I need to tell you a story,” she said quietly. “My life started with once upon a time…”


	9. Believing in Fairies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning - I'm playing a little fast and loose with the SGU timeline, bringing it forward a couple of years, so OUaT happened around the same time/just before it.

Rush stared at the ceiling.

He and Belle had spent the day away from the consoles and for the first time in months, his headache had receded from behind his eyes to settle as a dull throb at the base of skull. It was much more manageable.

He knew the woman wasn’t mad. He had spent time enough with her to know that, but when she had told him the story of her life, as she had warned, it sounded crazy. He had never had much time for fairytales as a child, caught up in the world of numbers and equations, but even he had heard of Snow White and Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin.

Rumpelstiltskin.

That was the crux of it.

The woman who was becoming his closest friend believed she had been in love with a fairytale creature, the imp, Rumpelstiltskin. She believed it had been true love, and that it was his magic which cast her out into the cosmos, when he used powers brought from one world to another. It was an accident, she insisted, the magic out of his control, but it was enough to curse her all over again.

Curses and magic and spells and true love.

Rush ran his hand over his face.

It was insane.

The look on his face had betrayed him, and she had smiled, sad and bittersweet. “It’s not so different from your Stargates,” she said. “You can believe in aliens using the names of ancient Gods, and yet, you can’t believe there’s a world of magic, where characters that you know as fairytales really live?”

They talked for hours. No. Talking was a mild word. It had been too heated to be merely called talking. He wanted to believe her, but it was impossible. Fairies and magic and true love’s kiss. She didn’t cry, but she walked around the room, keeping her distance from him, when he insisted on picking apart her tale. 

The fairytales were in the real world. She explained they’d been trapped there for nearly three decades, since some time in the 1980s. He had snorted, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She had turned on him with such quiet, fierce grief and honesty that it had been like a blow. She wasn’t lying, or at least she truly believed in what she was saying.

He rolled off the bed.

There was only one way that he could show her that her reality and memories of stories were getting tangled. Maybe, once she could see the divide, she could have closure. The least he could do was take her back to the place where she claimed her life had shattered around her and help her put the pieces back into something that made sense.

He stalked out into the corridors. There were still people around, so he assumed it was still what would be classed as a civilised time of day. He couldn’t be bothered to check. He had upset her and she had confused and worried him, and that was a state of affairs he simply couldn’t allow to continue.

He made his way to Young’s room, not bothering to knock before opening the door. 

Young looked up from a book, a fleeting expression of concern crossing his face. “Has something happened, Rush?”

“You might say that,” Rush replied. “Belle and I were discussing her mortality, and it transpires that she is actually from Earth. A pure human.”

Young set down his book. “From how long ago?” he asked.

“Oh, a year or two, give or take,” Rush replied, folding his arms. “Apparently, she comes from a town in Maine.” 

Young frowned in confusion that Rush hated to admit he was sharing. “So how the hell did she end up as an Ascended Ancient? She talks like she’s centuries old. If she’s only been Ascended two years, how does that work?”

“I’m not sure of that yet,” Rush replied, “but I think the answer lies in the place she came from.” He hesitated, then drew a breath and said, “I want to take her back. She needs to get closure about what happened, and maybe then, it’ll start making sense to her.”

“The communication stones?”

Rush nodded tightly. “There is too much in her story that doesn’t make sense,” he said. “I know she believes it all, but it’s… extremely unlikely all of it is true. If we can take her back to the place she came from, maybe her memories will settle, and she will be able to make peace with them.”

Young drummed his fingertips on the edge of the table. “And why are you taking such a personal interest in this?” he asked. 

Rush’s cheeks twitched and he ground his teeth. “I may be a callous man, Colonel,” he said as steadily as he could, “but even I do not want to see a young woman in distress, especially one who has been so helpful to us.”

“You believe her, about where she’s from?”

That was a loaded question, given the tale Belle had told him.

“I do,” he replied. “I have to go with her, if you give permission. I don’t think she would tell anyone else.”

Young rubbed his eyes, then sighed. “You know this’ll take some explaining,” he said. “It’s not like she’s a member of the crew. You know the questions they’ll ask about bringing her through, whether she’s safe, or if she might compromise the mission.”

“Right now, Colonel, I don’t give a fuck about that,” Rush said grimly. “This half-real past of hers is breaking her. She’s the one who can help us more with this ship than anyone. I don’t want to lose her.”

“Her?”

“That,” Rush corrected. “I don’t want to lose her skills.”

The Colonel looked at him, head to one side. “I think your first choice was the right one, Doctor,” he said quietly. Rush exhaled noisily. Young got to his feet. “I’ll speak to O’Neill. Explain the circumstances. I can’t make any promises.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Rush said. “I’d rather you didn’t mention anything I’ve told you…”

Young nodded. “Understandable,” he said. “Where is she?”

“We… had words,” Rush said, looking anywhere but the Colonel’s face. “I’m going to find her, but I wanted to know if there was even a possibility, before I went after her.”

“Don’t get her hopes up, Rush.”

Rush nodded, turning on his heel and walking out the room.

He knew all the places to check, but he knew that on this occasion, she wouldn’t be in any of them: her room, the viewing platform, the mess hall, the console room. He went to the console room all the same, nodding in greeting to Eli.

“Where is she?”

Eli shrugged. “Not here?”

“Eli, don’t play silly buggers,” Rush snapped. “If she talked to anyone about somewhere to go where she wouldn’t be bothered, it would be you.”

“And if she asked me for somewhere that she wouldn’t be bothered by anyone, why would I tell you where she is?” Eli asked, without looking up from the screen he was working on. “If she wants to be alone, let her be.”

“Eli,” Rush growled.

Eli looked at him with a snort. “Hey, don’t look at me. You’re the one who screwed up here, genius. She doesn’t want to talk to you right now, and I’m happy to let her take a time out.”

Rush had him pinned against the console in a heartbeat. “Eli, I’m not messing around here,” he snarled.

“Oh, yeah,” Eli snapped back in his face. “That’ll help. Violence and anger. Good job. No wonder she wants a bit of time alone.”

Rush stumbled back a step, releasing Eli’s shirt. The boy straightened up, smoothing it down, frowning at him. 

“What did you do anyway?”

Rush rubbed his eyes. “It’s not what I asked. It’s what I said. I need to apologise.”

“God,” Eli murmured, unimpressed. “You really screwed up, huh? Upset the one person who likes you _and_ you want to apologise?”

“Eli, please,” Rush said quietly. “I need to talk to her.”

“Why?”

He spun to find Belle standing in the doorway. She looked drawn, tired, and her arms were folded tightly across her chest. 

“I wanted to apologise,” he said, taking one step, the another towards her. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

She looked at him, calm and steady and unflappable as ever. “No,” she agreed. “You shouldn’t. I don’t like to be called a liar.”

“I never said…”

“You told me what I was saying couldn’t be true,” she replied, walking towards him. “You told me that it was impossible and insane. You may not have said it directly, but you called me a liar and lunatic.”

“Belle,” he whispered, reaching out to her.

She looked at his hand, then his face. “I know you don’t believe me.”

“You’re asking a lot of me,” he said, “and I don’t have much belief left.”

“And what do I have?” she asked, her voice only cracking on the last word. “Nicholas, what do I have?”

“A chance,” he said, casting aside all and any promises made to Young. Even if he had to steal the stones himself, he would take her back to Storybrooke, Maine, and let her see that her life wasn’t what she believed it to be. “A chance to go back and get closure. And maybe, you can find your happy ending.”


	10. Into the Woods

Belle's hands were trembling.

No, not her hands.

It was such a complex process to wrap her head around. They had been granted permission to use the communication stones, and the body she currently inhabited was not hers, yet every feeling she had was affecting it almost exactly as it would affect her own. Sergeant Hernandez looked nothing like Belle. She was taller, leaner, stronger, but the long, thin hands still shook as Belle's own would have done.

The car drew over by the side of the road, by the sign that welcomed them to Storybrooke.

"You're sure you're ready to do this?" Despite the unfamiliar face, Belle could recognise Rush's concern in the stranger's voice.

"I have to," she replied, staring straight ahead. "I know we can't come back yet, but I need him to know that I'm all right." She forced herself to look at him, disconcerted by the blue eyes looking back at her. "You can't breathe a word of anything you see here."

He nodded, watching her so carefully that she had to look away. "We can still go back."

"No," she said quietly. "He has to know what happened."

The rest of the journey into town was made in silence. Belle stared blindly out of the window. Vaguely, she noticed the forest seemed thicker, darker, more forbidding. She remembered the day when magic swept over it all, the way he had held her close, in that terrible instant when everything went from perfectly right to horribly wrong.

Buildings were overgrown and wild. The first stop was Gold's shop, but it was little more than a ruin, the windows shattered and the door hanging off its hinges. He had enemies, she remembered sadly. They must have come for what was theirs.

The house was just as deserted, so the only choice left was to seek outside help.

Belle's legs trembled as she walked up the steps to the Sheriff's station, Rush at her side. She could remember Emma, the daughter of Snow and Charming. Rumpelstiltskin had spoken about her with marginally less hostility than he had spoken about everyone else, so perhaps, she would be willing to help.

She almost sobbed in relief when she saw the woman.

Princess Emma, Sheriff Swan, was sharpening a sword with a whetstone, and rose as soon as she heard Belle's footsteps. There were new scars on her face, and a sternness about her features that hadn't been there before. She lowered the sword by her side, confusion visible in her eyes. No strangers ever came to Storybrooke. The magic kept them away, ignorant, safe.

"Can I help you?" she said.

Belle swallowed hard. She reached out blindly for Rush's hand as she asked, "Where can I find Mr Gold?"

Emma's eyes widened. "I'm sorry," she said. "There's no one by that name in town. Not anymore."

Belle's legs gave way beneath her and Rush caught her before she could fall. Her world felt it was narrowing to darkness, and she felt Rush's arms lift her, carry her to the nearest seat, holding her up as she tried to bring the world back into focus.

Emma was by their side in an instant, crouched down. "Are you okay?"

"Does she look okay?" Rush snapped. "This man, Gold, what happened to him?"

Belle stared at Emma, searching her face. The woman didn't seem to want to answer. "Please," she whispered. "Where's Rumpelstiltskin? What happened to him?"

Emma straightened up, and the confusion was replaced by suspicion. "Who the hell are you?"

Belle tried to find some last vestiges of energy, some little bit of strength. "It's me, Emma. It's Belle."

"The hell it is!"

Her hand shot out, catching Emma's wrist. "Emma, daughter of Snow and Charming, slayer of the dragon, mother of Henry, Saviour of us all." She laughed bitterly. "What do I need to say to convince you this is real? Do I have to poison Henry like Regina did last time?"

Emma stared at her. "Belle?" He said you were dead! You... don't exactly look like you."

Belle's hand fell away from her wrist. "Long story," she whispered. "What happened to him?"

"He retreated to the forest," Emma said. "Took refuge in one of the cabins out there. We leave him alone, mostly. He... doesn't deal well with anyone anymore. Not since you..."

Belle's heart leapt. "He's alive?"

Emma looked at her uncomfortably. "Living, yes," she said, "but he's not in a good way."

Belle scrambled to her feet. "Where?" she demanded.

Emma looked at Rush, then back at her. "I can drive you out there," she said. "Regina's got traps laid all over the place, but I'm pretty good at spotting them. Your friend should stay here."

"Like hell," Rush snarled.

"No offence, Sir," Emma said sharply, "but this is my town, and the man we're going to see doesn't take well to strangers. I'm not willing to risk you being blasted to pieces."

"Nicholas," Belle touched his arm. "I'll be fine. He wouldn't hurt me."

"Not on purpose," he replied grimly. "It's that bastard's fault you're stuck with us."

Belle closed her eyes for a moment. "Yes," she agreed, "it is, but I don't want you getting in the way." She looked at Emma. "Is it safe for him to stay here?"

"This is my castle," Emma said with a tight nod. "Regina stopped trying to gain ground here, after I kicked her ass into touch." She slid the sword into the sheath at her belt and stalked closer to Rush. "And if you so much as touch anything, you'll regret it."

"Because paperwork presents such temptation," he retorted. He caught Belle's hand. "Be careful."

She tried to smile, nodded, then turned to the Sheriff. "Do you have a spare sword, Emma?"

Both of them were armed when they climbed into Emma's bug. The little car was holding up well, and Belle couldn't help notice the shotguns and maces that were stacked together in the back seat. The car crackled with magical defences as well. 

"How bad are things here?" Belle asked quietly.

Emma kept her eyes on the road. "Bad," she replied just as quietly. "What about you? Where have you been?"

Belle laughed quietly, sadly. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she said. "What happened to Rumpelstiltskin?"

Emma was silent for several minutes. "He was always on the knife-edge," she murmured. "Then you were gone, the last thing giving him some kind of restraint. He tried to leave Storybrooke, and when he couldn't do that, he just seemed to stop caring. He never said what it was happened, only that you had died." She glanced at Belle. "He and Regina went head-to-head, all out war. The only respite we've had has been while they've been licking their wounds."

Belle clasped her hands together in front of her. "I don't know if coming back will help."

"Let's put it this way," Emma said quietly. "It can't make things any worse."

That made Belle's stomach turn unpleasantly. 

Ahead of them, tangled branches and coiled briars folded back from the road, leaving a clear path.

"He knows you're coming," Belle said quietly. 

Emma nodded. "I'm the only one he'll still talk to," she admitted as they drove down the twisting road towards the cabins. "Sometimes Henry too, if he's having a good day, but those are few and far between."

They drew up in front of a ramshackle cabin, but the ground crackled and sparked underfoot as they stepped out of the car. Emma led the way up the steps, Belle making sure to tread exactly where the other woman trod. 

"Hey," Emma called out before pushing the door open and stepping into the cabin.

It reeked like his laboratory in the Dark Castle, the chemicals of the mortal world twisted up by magic. All of the windows were covered, the darkness stifling, and Belle felt her heart breaking for him. He was turning back into the lonely creature he had been before she knew him.

"Well, well, well." She almost cried out at the familiar voice. "If it isn't our Princess." He appeared out of the shadows, gaunt and hollow-eyed, his smile little more than a token twist of his lips. "And I see you've brought a little friend with you." He wagged a finger. "That's not allowed."

"You'll want to meet this one, trust me," Emma murmured. 

His eyes were no longer brown, his skin no longer human. "I doubt that, dearie," he said. He waved a hand dismissively. "Run along. I'm not entertaining today."

"Rumpelstiltskin," Belle whispered, her breath catching, her eyes filling with uncalled for tears.

Rumpelstiltskin scowled at Emma. "Now, dearie, what did I tell you about throwing my name around?"

"It wasn't me," Emma said. "She knows you. And you know her."

Abruptly, his face was inches from Belle's, staring intently, and it took all her self-control not to throw her arms around him and hug him. 

"No, no," he said, his upper lip drawing back from his teeth. "I've never seen this one before."

"You have," Belle said.

He stepped even closer, crowding her back against the wall, but she didn't back away, standing toe to toe with him, as she always did. "I know every face of every person in this miserable little forest," he hissed, his hands leaping up and framing her face, claws pressing against her skin painfully. "I don't know you."

"Because this is a borrowed body," she replied, lifting her hands to cover his, to hold them fast. "It's the only way I could come back to you." He curled his fingers and she winced as the nails cut into her skin. "You told me you would give me all the time in eternity to see the universe, if that's what I wished."

He froze, rigid, staring at her. His hands jerked under hers, but she held them fast. "Liar," he gasped out. "You can't know that."

"I can," she said softly. "Rumpelstiltskin, it's me."

He tore his hands free and grabbed her by the shoulders, slamming her up against the wall. "Stop lying!" he snarled, his hand around her throat. His grip loosened only marginally when Emma's sword pressed under his jaw.

"Let her go," she said.

"It's all right," Belle said, her voice calm, even, despite the fact her body was shaking with emotion. There was no fear. She was never afraid of him, not then and certainly not now. "Wait outside, Emma. It's all right. I'll be fine."

Emma reluctantly withdrew the sword. "You hurt her," she warned Rumpelstiltskin, who bared his teeth at her, "and I'll bring it back on you ten times over." She stalked out the front door, sliding her sword back into its sheath. 

Belle brought one of her hands up to cover the hand at her throat. "Rumpelstiltskin," she whispered.

"Who are you?" he asked, his voice breaking. "Don't lie."

"You know I've never lied to you," she said, stroking his hand. "You told me to go. Twice, you told me to go. Twice I went. But I never wanted to leave, not once."

His voice was barely more than a whisper. "Belle?"

She nodded, as much as his hand would allow.

His hand fell away and suddenly, she was in his arms and he was holding her as if the world would fall apart around them. "You came back," he whispered, and she could feel tears, hot and wet, through her shirt.

She held him close, stroking his hair, his shoulders. "I had to tell you what happened," she whispered, "Where I am. Why I can't really come back."

He lifted his head, stricken. "You can't stay?"

She shook her head, touching his cheek. "The magic was strong," she said unhappily. "You told me to see the universe, and I ended up at the other end of it."

"But you're here," he protested, holding her tightly, in case she tried to slip away or vanish. "You're here."

"In a borrowed body," she reminded him, trying to keep her voice steady. "I'm on a ship, in the furthest parts of the galaxy. The only way I could come back was through a communication device they have. I couldn't let you think I was dead." She brushed her fingers against his cheek. "I could only come back this way to tell you. I can't come back."

"No," he growled. "No, I'm not losing you again."

"Rumpelstiltskin, this isn't my body. This isn't really me." She caught his face between her hands. "They could sever the link at any moment, so even if you're thinking about locking me up somewhere so I can't leave, I can promise you it wouldn't work."

"Then why?" he demanded furiously. "Why come back at all?"

"And leave you thinking you'd killed me?" She shook her head. "I couldn't do that to you. I'm alive. I'm as well as can be expected." She leaned closer, this new body almost equal in height to him, and brushed a kiss against his cheek. "If there was a way..."

"I'll find one," he whispered. "I swear I'll find one. I found a way to this world. I'll find a way to you."

"You found a way here to find Bae," she said. "Find your son. He's what you came here for."

"And forget you?" He shook his head wildly. "Never going to happen, dearie." He curled his fingers into her hair. "I'll break this damned curse properly, find Bae, and then we'll come for you."

She tried to smile, tried to believe it, but she knew Destiny. She knew the impossibility of it all. "No," she said quietly. "You won't."


	11. A World Apart

Dr Nicholas Rush was not a patient man.

He was especially not known for being patient when he was put in a situation outwith his control, and his single reason for being there had been stolen away by a fierce-looking blonde woman with a sword. 

The proviso had been that he was not allowed to touch anything, but when they were still absent, nearly two hours later, he was bored, frustrated even. He knew better than to wander off, in case Belle returned, but the town was unnerving him. There was something sinister and quiet about it. There were no cars, and as it got darker, there didn’t seem to be any electricity to power the lights. 

If this had been another planet, that might have been a reasonable expectation, but this was the United States. This was Maine. This was not a small hamlet in the backside of the wilderness. Electricity was available, and yet the whole town was dark.

There were candles, lanterns too, so he lit one and settled at the Sheriff’s desk. 

Idly, he flicked through a couple of folders, then frowned. Some of the names caught his eye and he sat up, looking more closely. There was a normal name on each one, and beneath each normal name, another name had been scrawled in red ink: Bashful, Red Riding Hood, Jack (Giant killer or beanstalk?).

Surely, a whole town couldn’t be suffering the same delusion as Belle.

He pulled the folders closer, leafing through them.

“Emma!” A yell made him look up from the desk, almost guiltily, as a man raced into the room, sword in his hand. He froze at the sight of Rush, then levelled his sword at Rush’s throat. Rush was both amused and annoyed by how quickly his hands automatically leapt up, spread and empty. “Where’s Emma? Who the hell are you?”

“The Sheriff?”

“Yes,” the man snapped. “The Sheriff. Where is she?”

“She had an errand to run,” Rush replied, keeping his hands visible. “She said she was going to see Rumpelstiltskin.”

The man’s face paled. “Snow!” he called. “Snow, she’s gone to see him.”

A woman strode into the room. Like the man, she had a sword, but she also had a dagger on her hip, and her sleeves were pushed up to her elbows. She gave Rush a cursory look, then looked at the other man. “You know she doesn’t go out there unless she has to, Charming.”

Rush stared at them in disbelief. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“No offence, sir, but who the hell are you?” The man - Charming an unfitting name if ever there was one - demanded.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he retorted, batting the sword away from his throat. It was back, just as quickly, the sharp edge of the blade cold against his skin.

“You might want to answer him,” the woman - Snow? - said with a tight smile. “He gets a little protective when it comes to strange men sniffing around our little girl’s castle.”

Rush licked his lower lip. “Rush,” he said. “My name is Dr Nicholas Rush.”

“And your real one,” Charming growled. “Your name from there?”

“There?”

“The forest,” Snow clarified. 

He shook his head, staring at them. “What the hell did they put in the water here?”

Snow leaned closer, staring at him. “You’re not from here,” she breathed. “You’re from the outside.” She pushed Charming’s sword to one side, sitting on the edge of the desk to stare at him. “How did you find out about this place? It’s meant to be untraceable.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rush said, staring from one to the other. 

Unless it was some kind of deranged experiment, closing away a group of individuals until they cracked and took on the personas of fairytale creatures, Belle’s tale was starting to make more and more sense. 

“Who brought you here?” Charming asked. He was pacing on the far side of the desk, and he looked worried, angry. “Was it the Queen? Did she send for reinforcements?”

“The Queen?” Rush echoed. “The Evil Queen? Wears black a lot? Likes to imprison girls in dungeons? Cast a curse on the town?”

“That’s the one,” Snow said coolly. “What do you know?”

“I know that I think I’m going insane,” Rush decided. “Belle told me…”

“Belle?” Charming spun around to face him. “How do you know Belle?”

“She brought me here.”

Snow rose, shaking her head. “Impossible. He said she died.”

“Well, I’m fairly sure she didn’t,” Rush said, folding his arms over his chest. “She’s been with me for the last two months.”

Snow and Charming exchanged looks. 

“Explain,” Charming said. “Now.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Rush said, rising to his feet. “Now, can one of you perhaps take me to this Rumpelstiltskin’s house so I can fetch her and take her back to where she ought to be?”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Snow said. She caught his shoulder and pushed him back down into the chair. “The Queen’s men are out just now, and no one is going anywhere. We need Emma back here before we can make a move.”

He shook his head, running his hands over his face. “This can’t be happening.”

“Your Majesties!”

Rush looked out between his fingers, then lowered his hands. “What the hell…”

The tiny, flying blue woman ignored him, speaking urgently to Snow and Charming, and all three turned at the sound of boots in the hall. The Sheriff strode back in, trailed by Belle, and another person, who could only be called that because he was vaguely humanoid in shape. Otherwise, he might have been a lizard.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” Charming murmured, his hand at his sword once more. 

The creature grinned unpleasantly. “Charming, Snow, so lovely to see you both.” He turned his attention to Rush, approaching with a skipping step and leaning closer to stare at him. Rush stared back into the inky eyes, trying not to look at the scales, the inhuman skin, the teeth. “I hear you’re the one who brought my Belle back to say goodbye.”

“She was unhappy,” Rush said, his mouth dry. He tried to rise but the man-lizard snapped his fingers, binding him to his seat.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” Belle said sharply. “Release him. Now.”

Rumpelstiltskin giggled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and Rush recognised that expression of something between heart-thumping agony and grief. He saw it every morning when he looked in the mirror. “Of course, dear, of course.” The bonds fizzled away. “You will keep her safe for me, Doctor Nicholas Rush. You will protect her until I can find her.”

“That’s impossible,” Rush said, rising this time. He was taller than the other man, but knew if he was in his own body, they would likely be the same height. “If you can’t undo what you did, how the hell are you meant to find her, when even we don’t know where we are?”

Rumpelstiltskin walked his fingertips up Rush’s chest. “Don’t tell me anything is impossible, Nicholas,” he hissed. “Never tell me something is impossible. It only makes me more determined to do it. I’ve lost her before, but this time,” he smiled, slow and calm, “I will find her.”

A hand appeared on the smaller man’s shoulder, and he was pulled back by Belle. 

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she said softly. “Find Bae. Let that be your focus. You would kill yourself trying to find me as well. Find him. Be happy.”

Rush clearly felt as awkward as all the others in the room, when the creepy little reptile-man wrapped his arms around Belle and buried his face in her shoulder. “How can I be?” he whispered, so quietly it was almost in audible. “Without you?”

Belle stroked his hair gently. “You know I’m alive and well,” she whispered. “Please, let that be enough. Don’t break yourself for my sake.”

Rush turned to face the window. “Belle, we should be on our way,” he said, his voice rougher than he wanted it to be. He didn’t know what was getting to him the most: that he had accused Belle of lying, when it seemed her whole life was exactly as she had said, or that she at least had the chance to say goodbye to the love of her life. 

“Yeah, about that,” the Sheriff said. “We got a problem.”

“The Queen sent out her hunters,” Snow agreed. “Looks like the arrival of our visitors got under her skin. She either wants them taken care of or taken to her.” Her mouth curved in something that wasn’t a smile. “She thinks we have reinforcements.”

“And what, exactly, does that mean?” Rush demanded. 

“It means that unless we have some major support, you and Belle aren’t going anywhere,” the Sheriff replied.

Belle looked up from Rumpelstiltskin, her hand still smoothing his hair. “We do have major support,” she murmured quietly. She lifted her lover’s face with one hand. “Rumpelstiltskin, can you help us get out?” Rush glanced over his shoulder, saw the way the reptile-man looked at her, longing and misery and grief hanging on him. “Please, can you protect us?”

Rumpelstiltskin’s lips twitched into a bitter parody of a smile. “Of course, dear,” he whispered. “I’ll protect you.”


	12. Making A Way

The journey out of Storybrooke was one of the most terrifying experiences of Belle’s life.

Rush was at the wheel of the car, but more significantly, Rumpelstiltskin was on the roof, his feet lashed there by sparks of glittering magic, as they raced through the forests towards the end of city borders. She could see him through the sunroof, crouched as if readying to leap, and she could see the power crawling over him like electricity, gathering and surging.

Regina was attacking and mercilessly, taking anyone who was not her friend to be her enemy without question. Somehow, the witch had brought across dragons, and they were tearing down out of the sky, gouts of flaming setting the trees alight. 

Rumpelstiltstkin lashed out with his arms, tearing the flame out of the air, gathering it between his hands, compacting it down into a glowing, ice-bright sphere, then returning it on the dragons, the recoil making the car leap and jolt, as if the sky itself had been torn open.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rush bellowed. “Hit the ones behind! You’re shattering the road when you throw them in front, you stupid arsehole!”

“There are more of them in front of us than behind, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin snarled through the crackling sunroof. He thrust out his right hand again, deflecting a surge of lightning. “If you would like to trade places, I’m sure we can make a deal.”

“Nicholas,” Belle cried, grabbing the wheel and tugging.

The car veered off the road and the tree that had been falling narrowly missed them.

“For God’s sake!” Rush snarled, flooring the accelerator. “Are you even trying to be useful up there?”

“Belle, dear, I really don’t like this one,” Rumpelstiltskin growled, tearing the sunroof aside to keep the glass from shattering inwards. He held down a hand. “If you would be kind enough to give me the missile-launcher?”

Belle groped into the back seat. Emma, apparently, had ready access to weapons websites that delivered anywhere and, for some inexplicable reason, anywhere included a realm concealed from the rest of the world by magic. They also did a fine line in grenades.

“I thought you were magic,” Rush snapped, trying to get the car back onto the road from the verge, both of them bouncing in their seats.

Rumpelstiltskin giggled. “All magic has a price, dearie,” he said, as Belle handed up the missile-launcher, “and have no doubts if I had any to spare, I would be turning you into a snail where you sit.”

“Will you both stop?” Belle shouted. “Let’s just get through this alive, all right?”

Both men scowled, and Rush pushed his hair back from his face, leaning forward over the wheel. The headlights were cutting slices through the darkness of the forest, but the flames on either side were building.

Rumpelstiltskin lifted the missile-launcher as if he had used the thing a dozen times before and fired straight into the darkness.

“That was tremendously useful,” Rush snarled. “Firing into nothing, while there are bloody fire-breathing lizards overhead.”

Rumpelstiltskin crouched down on the roof. He was breathing heavily, hard, and Belle could see a trickle of blood at his nose. She reached up to grasp his hand. “I wasn’t firing into nothing, dearie,” he said, his other hand gripping the edge of the sunroof’s opening. “I was firing into the dark. There’s a lot more there than you might think.”

“More dangers ahead?” Belle asked, squeezing his hand.

He grinned at her, showing all his teeth. “It’s Regina,” he said. “Do you really imagine she’ll let new toys escape?”

“What the hell is that?” Rush said slowly.

“Ah, good,” Rumpelstiltskin said, lifting his head, as Belle turned and looked through the windscreen. She gasped at the sight of part of a vast leg, some fifteen feet long from foot to knee. “I did hit it after all. Wonderful.”

“Is that a giant?” Belle asked, staring.

“No, it’s a midget,” Rumpelstiltskin said then giggled faintly, falling on one knee on the roof.

She looked up at him in alarm. “Rumpelstiltskin, get in here,” she said. “You’re weak.”

He shook his head. “No, no, dearie,” he murmured, lifting his head. “I can’t protect you from inside the box. That should be the last of the guardians, I think. We’re almost there.” He gave her a weak smile. “You’ll be free to be on your way.”

“How will you get back?” she demanded, climbing up in the seat.

He lifted his hand from the edge of the sunroof, with an extravagant gesture. “As I do everything, dearie,” he murmured. “Magic.”

“You said you had none to spare,” Rush observed from the driver’s seat. His eyes were still fixed on the road ahead, but his voice was quieter now.

“Oh, don’t you dare,” Belle said, looking wildly at Rumpelstiltskin. “I didn’t come all this way just to see you kill yourself to save me. You get off this car right now, and get back before it’s too late!”

He grinned at her, suddenly the imp again. “But where’s the fun in that?” he said, then leapt to his feet again and brought his hands together with a dazzling flash above his head. He looked down at her. “I made you a promise, Belle. I _will_ find you.”

“Rumpel…” she began.

He just laughed and vanished in a crackle of power, as Rush shouted, “I see the sign!”

Rumpelstiltskin’s disembodied voice echoed through the car. “Run, rabbits, run, as fast as you can.”

“Go!” Belle cried, trying her best to keep the tears from streaming down her face as they accelerated towards the city limits.

She didn’t dare look back, not for anything. The crash of power against power, magic scoring off magic, filled the air with most horrific sounds. Dragons screamed and bellowed, and she could swear she heard the earth cracking apart.

And then, they were past the sign and all was silent.

Rush braked the car, throwing open the door and scrambling out, but Belle remained where she was sitting, shaken.

He returned a moment later. “It looks like an empty road and a forest,” he said. “I can’t see anything.” Or anyone, he seemed to be silently adding.

“Magic,” Belle whispered, staring blindly ahead. “It keeps you from seeing what is right in front of you.”

“Belle…” he said.

She closed her eyes, squeezed them tight. “Don’t say anything.”

He must have walked around the car, because the next thing she knew, the door beside her opened, and his arms were around her, and she couldn’t have stopped herself from falling into his embrace and sobbing. 

Eventually, they must have moved.

She didn’t know.

The roads rushed by.

The lights flicked overhead.

She rested her head against the window, and wondered if the tears would stop.

Rush helped her out of the car when they reached the Pentagon. She felt like she had aged a thousand years, as if she had lived every year of her time as an Ancient. He put an arm around her waist, leading her through the building. She could barely lift one foot in front of the other.

“Sir? Ma’am? Is there a problem?”

Rush shook his head, speaking for them both. “We want to get back,” he said tersely. He hadn’t taken his eyes from her from the moment they reached Homeworld Command, and Belle wished he would. It hurt too much to be watched. 

When the link was severed, and the familiar, stale air of the ship washed over them, Belle tried to rise, but her legs were shaking.

“You’re back,” Young said. He was sitting by the table.

“Well-observed,” Rush snapped, rising to circle the table. “Belle…”

She reached out to him blindly. “He didn’t die,” she said, looking up, tears pouring down her face. “I know he can’t have died, Nicholas. He promised he would find me. He wouldn’t break a promise.”

“Belle…” he said softly, kneeling and letting her lean into his arms.

Her fingers dug into his back and she buried her face in his shoulder. “Lie to me,” she pleaded. Anything had to be easier than the grief tearing through her. “Please. Lie to me.”

He pulled her closer, rocking her. “He’ll be fine,” he whispered. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”


	13. Hide and Seek

Rush was used to guilt.

He had grown adept at putting it to the back of his mind, not dealing with it or just ignoring it entirely. He was used to making the difficult decisions. He was used to being blamed. He was used to seeing looks of betrayal on the faces of colleagues.

Nothing, however, prepared him for the guilt of Belle’s grief.

His intention had been simple: take her back to the place she came from, confront the fantasy that was twisting up her mind, and then let her move on with her life. He never imagined that the fantasy was, in fact, real and that he would not only meet the love of her life, but also be the cause of his death.

It was possible, however remotely, that he might have survived.

After all, Rush had seen the man firing lightning from his hands and catching the flames blasted at them by a bloody dragon. If he could do those things, who was to say that he couldn’t survive to magic himself to safety?

He told himself that. He told Belle that.

Both of them knew it was probably a lie.

When they returned, she had barely been able to stand up, let alone think of walking anywhere, so he had lifted her up, carried her to his own room. He didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. He wasn’t leaving her alone, and when he laid her down, her arms were so tight around him that he couldn’t have left her even if he had wanted to.

Eli came knocking the next morning, and Belle managed to sit up, smile and act as if she hadn’t just been through hell.

It was like dealing with Gloria’s loss all over again, Rush thought, when he watched her talk to Eli. He could see the fissures, the cracks in her smile, the way she turned her face just enough so fresh tears wouldn’t be noticed, the way her hands trembled. He’d become adept enough at plastering over the cracks to recognise them in another person.

“Eli,” he said quietly, “Give us some time.”

Apparently, speaking softly was enough to tell the boy it was important.

The doors hissed shut behind him, and Rush sat down on the edge of the bed.

“It wasn’t just a dream, was it?” she said.

“You know it wasn’t,” he said, offering her his hand. “Belle…”

“Don’t apologise,” she said before he could speak. “Don’t. You didn’t make me go there. You didn’t make him defend us.” Her voice was verging on breaking again, and he squeezed her hand. “You didn’t do this.”

“Nor did you,” he said quietly. “This wasn’t your fault either.”

She looked up at him. “I’m trying to believe that,” she said in a small voice. “But I asked him to protect us, and he did. Right until the end.”

Rush kicked off his boots and climbed back onto the bed to gather her up in his arms, letting her cling to him. “He loved you,” he said, forcing his own voice to steadiness. “Even if you hadn’t asked, I know the bloody idiot would have done it anyway.”

She laughed through her sobs. “He would,” she whispered, her fingers fisted in his t-shirt. “If anyone told him something was impossible, he would have done it. He did it.” Her body shook in his arms. “He never found Bae. All he did to find him, and he never found him.”

“His son?” Rush recalled.

Belle nodded. “He broke their world apart to get them here,” she said, her voice trembling. “He never found him.”

“Not because of you.” Rush cut across her before she could finish the thought that he knew would follow. “You said yourself that he brought magic across to a world that wasn’t meant to have it. That must have shifted the parameters of the curse, and stopped anyone leaving the town. He locked himself into another prison. Not you.”

“And Bae never knew.”

Rush was silent for a long while, stroking her hair. “Belle,” he finally murmured, “did he know when his son came through to this world?”

Belle looked at him in confusion. “What?”

“Did he know the precise trajectory when he cast the curse?” Rush asked, staring into nothing. “You said he spent centuries building it. It would have been sheer stupidity not to set the curse to arrive in a time when he would still be living, correct?”

“He must have,” she agreed, sounding bewildered. “I don’t understand.”

He looked down at her. “We’ll finish what he started,” he said. “He might not have been able to find his son, but we can. We have enough resources to hand to have a search done for him. We can finish their story for them.”

Belle’s eyes widened, and she took a gulping breath. “Do you think it’s possible?”

He was off the bed in a moment, pulling on his boots. “We have to hurry,” he said, offering her a hand. “Before they start work on the car.” Belle scrambled out of the bed, grasping his hand, and he saw the moment she realised what he intended.

“His blood?”

Rush nodded, as they walked briskly into the corridor. “If there’s any DNA trace, then we can have the Homeworld Command do a trace for him, and if they can find him, then we can find out what happened.”

“And we can tell him what his father did,” Belle agreed. “What he tried to do to find him.”

Somehow, somewhere between his bunk and the communication room, they were running, and Belle’s hand was so tight around his that it was verging on painful. He could almost feel the hope pouring off her, this chance to make some kind of amends for her lover’s demise.

The stones were sealed away, as expected, but the look on his face was enough to stop anyone arguing with him. Belle watched intently as he set the system up, sitting in one of the vacant seats. 

“Hurry,” she whispered, squeezing his hand and releasing it as he took the stone.

There were the usual protocols, but Rush ignored them, pushing past the soldiers who were on duty at the door. Whoever he was inhabiting was well over six feet, so no one was about to stop him when he got momentum going. He was running by the time he hit the level to reach the garage complex, and sprinting flat-out between the cars.

The fact they had almost been mangled in the car was the saving grace. The scrapes, chips and breaks meant that the car was still sitting forlornly where they had left it. Rush scrambled up onto the bonnet, over the cracked windscreen and onto the roof.

As he had hoped there was blood smeared around the gaping sunroof.

“Good, good,” he murmured. “That’ll be enough.”

“Sir! Sir, please get down from the car!”

Rush lifted his head and looked at the young warden standing a few steps away. “I don’t plan on stealing one of your fine vehicles,” he snapped. “If you want to make yourself useful, run and fetch me a clean knife of some kind and an unused envelope or plastic file.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“No, I don’t imagine you do,” Rush murmured, staring at the roof of the car. The paint was blistered and blackened. He could only imagine the power that Rumpelstiltskin had been drawing on. The metal was even buckled in some places. He looked at the warden again. “If you can’t understand my instructions, give me your damned radio so I can get what I need.”

“Envelope and knife?” 

“Clean and unused,” Rush repeated, running his hand over the metal. He slid down from the car as the warden bustled off, and took his time walking around the vehicle, taking in all the other damage. It was amazing that they hadn’t been pulled over on the way back. The car looked like it was going to be a write-off.

Whatever the hell it was that was in command of the world around Storybrooke, Rush was glad he wouldn’t have to face it again. The witch, Regina, whoever she was, was at least contained by the curse. That was one less thing to worry about. The others in town, well, they knew what she was capable of, and they knew how to fight her.

Belle was safe from that whole world. 

That was his only concern now.

It took less than fifteen minutes for the warden to return, and Rush scraped the blood into the envelope as carefully as he could. Even if it turned up no results, at least they had tried. If they found him, then Belle would have an ending of some kind, and maybe this one would be a little happier than his last attempt to give her one.


	14. Distractions

Belle liked to have distractions.

The more the better, truth be told.

It made it easier not to think about the last time she had seen Rumpelstiltskin. The look in his eyes as he promised he would find her, a moment before he vanished, haunted her. She woke most nights, gasping, sobbing.

She wasn’t surprised that Nicholas refused to leave her alone. 

There were curious whispers around the ship, when they were seen together, but she couldn’t care less about them. Only Eli came close to knowing exactly what happened, and she had no desire to see the looks of confusion and derision at her closeness to Nicholas turn to looks of pity. They would pity her, she knew. Of course they would. It was human nature.

So, she distracted herself with work on the ship, on the consoles, on anything that wasn’t sitting still and thinking about Rumpelstiltskin. Their search for Baelfire was in the hands of the scientists on earth, and there was nothing she could do about that, so Destiny and Nicholas became her focus.

It worried him, she knew.

It worried him, because he feared she was going down the same path that he had been on for years. As much as he pretended to be hard-heart and tough, she knew better. The shell hid the broken man within, and he didn’t let anyone close enough to see it. She didn’t know if she could ever harden herself so much. She had never thought she would need to.

It almost came as a relief when there was a breakthrough in the data they were sifting. A new series of rooms on one side of the ship became available, and for the first time in days, Nicholas was his usual abrasive self, dashing about and dragging people away from consoles when they weren’t working fast enough.

The discovery warranted it: an Ancient device had been uncovered, one of their control chairs, and that was enough to send all of the scientists into a whirlwind of activity. Even Young came down to look in on their progress.

Belle said little, only watching them, searching her scattered memories for the means to use the device.

She was unsurprised to find Rush and Young arguing over it.

“The last human who attempted to control one of these things died!”

Nicholas waved his words away. “Yes, but this is a much simpler model.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s any less dangerous.”

The other scientists were poring over consoles, trying to pretend they weren’t listening or picking a side. Belle watched them for a moment, then looked at the chair. It was a danger, but it was also a necessity. They needed a way to bring the ship under their control, and they needed to be able to control their journey.

She remembered seeing Nicholas, half-dead with exhaustion, slumped over a console. She remembered the lack of food. She remembered people growing tired, rebellious, desperate in enclosed spaces.

Rush and Young were nose-to-nose, snarling at one another.

Neither of them noticed as she sat down, until the arm-locks hissed into place.

Rush whirled around and she saw the colour drain from his face. “Belle!”

She smiled at him. “I can help,” she said, closing her eyes as the neural panels closed in place on her temples. The power hummed and she arched in the chair was a gasp as the connection was made. She heard him swearing, then the sounds of a scuffle. Young. Pulling him back.

And then, such trivialities were nothing.

For a moment, it felt as it had to be Ascended: knowledge that had been on the periphery of her senses was suddenly clear before her. It sleeted through her mind, not new, but newly remembered, opening her eyes, and blinding her with its brightness.

It was only when she came back to herself that she realised she was sobbing from the urgent heat of it filling her. She heard her ragged gasping cries in long moments before the light dimmed and the restraints hissed back, leaving her sagged and trembling in the chair.

“Belle!” Nicholas was on his knees in front of the chair, catching her as she fell forward.

Her arms fell heavily around his shoulders and she breathed in deeply, blinking to clear the moisture from her eyes. Rush was muttering to her, about her stupidity and selfish behaviour and doing more harm than good, but beneath it, she could hear the veneer of fear.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, trembling. 

With effort, she managed to push her hands against his shoulders and got to her feet. Her legs trembled beneath her, and he rose, catching her around the waist. 

“You don’t look bloody fine,” he snapped.

She looked at him. “Better than you would have, if you tried,” she murmured. “Can you get me to a console?”

He nodded, leading her over to one of the nearest ones, and she braced both hands on the edge, closing her eyes and looking inwards. Now that she knew the information was still there, it was easier to know how to find it. She breathed slowly, in, out, in, out, sifting through her refreshed memory.

“Please ask everyone to step back from all of the consoles,” she whispered. “And I think it would be best if everyone on the ship sits down.”

“You heard her, Colonel,” Rush said, his hand resting between her shoulderblades in silent support.

“What’s she doing?” Young asked.

“I think we’re about to find out,” Nicholas said. “Give the order.”

Belle waited until Young barked his instructions through the radio, and gave a moment for people to obey. Her fingers were trembling on the console and she could feel the thrum of power of the ship. Her hands moved up to the screen and she opened her eyes. When her hands began to move, she could not follow with mere human vision. Her fingers danced and darted and whirled, drawing and dragging, changing and twisting.

She heard Nicholas gasp beside her, and she knew that he could see what she was doing, even if his eyes could not follow any better than her own. Schematics, images, routes, power-grids, energy-lines: they all flickered across the screen as rapidly as moving pictures. Her mind was doing the work, guiding her hands.

“Hang on!” he shouted out, wrapping an arm around her waist and his other hand around the edge of the console, bracing them both.

The ship leapt suddenly, somehow picking up speed, and she vaguely registered a yell of someone who hadn’t taken heed of his warning.

A few dozen more taps and drums on the screen and it slowed back down. The timbre of the engines’ roar was different, only subtly but she could feel it from the bare soles of her feet all the way up her spine.

Belle turned her head, which suddenly felt very heavy, to look at him. She smiled, only a little shakily. “I think I need to lie down,” she said, a moment before her legs folded beneath her, leaving her sagged in his arms.

He held her carefully, then winced and wiped at her face with his sleeve. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

“Only Ancients can use the chair,” she murmured, frowning at his sleeve when it came away bloody. “I’m bleeding?”

“You’re human,” he said quietly. “You could have died.”

She felt a stab of guilt. “No,” she murmured. “I knew I wouldn’t. The chair gives you access to all the knowledge of the Ancients. I already had that. I had only lost my way to it. You can’t overload in information you already have.”

He snorted in frustration, but it lacked malice. “You’re a bloody stupid woman.”

She closed her eyes, laughing quietly, wearily. “You’re helping me find what I need,” she whispered. “I thought it was fair to return the favour.”

“The favour?” he echoed. “Belle, you bloody idiot, you gave us control of the ship. That’s more than returning the favour!”

She laid her head against his chest. “Don’t you like your present?” she asked faintly.

“If you weren’t half-conscious right now,” he growled, “I would wring your damned neck.”

She giggled, faint and breathless. “You’re welcome.”


	15. Spotting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one. I entirely blame "An Inward Treasure", which has consumed my brain completely.

The news came in nearly a week after the blood samples had been taken.

It was three days since Belle had damn near killed herself sitting in the chair.

Not that she would admit it, but three days confined to the med bay told them both it was serious. The headaches had only just receded enough for her to sit upright, and she even took his scoldings with good grace.

The nosebleeds still occurred from time to time, but she insisted a little nosebleed was a small price to pay for all the knowledge she had acquired for them.

It was bleeding again when he arrived with the news from Homeworld Command, and the look on his face was enough to tell her what had been discovered. She started to rise, then sank back, one hand to her head.

“They’ve found him?” she said, dabbing at her nose.

“They’ve found him,” he agreed. “He’s a civilian, living in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Looks like he wanted to keep himself to himself. No records, apart from foster care papers. He must have arrived a few months before Storybrooke made the shift.”

Belle’s features broke into a weary smile. “Good,” she said. “Good.” She rubbed her brow again. “Can we go now? I want to find him. I want to tell him what happened. What I remember.”

“Belle.” Rush sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. “You’re not in any fit state to go anywhere.”

She gave him that steely look. The woman would do anything she damn well pleased, he knew. She was even more stubborn than he was, and that was saying something. “Nicholas, if you don’t help me go there, so help me, I will turn every single part of this ship off and strand you all here.”

He gave her a look. “Even if you could stand on your own two feet, you wouldn’t do that,” he said. “You’re too kind for your own good.”

She made a face at him. “Fine,” she said. “I’d lock you out of all the consoles and make sure that everyone but you could access them.” She reached out and caught his wrist. “Get me to earth, Nicholas. Get me to Baelfire.”

“You’re a stubborn bitch, you know that?”

Her mouth curled up. “It has been said,” she agreed. “And anyway,” she added, “even if I’m in no state to go anywhere, I won’t be. Technically. It’ll be nice to be in a body without a migraine for a few hours.”

“Now, you’re splitting hairs,” he said with a snort.

“You’ll do it, though,” she said, leaning back with a tired smile. “You can go first, explain that some poor person will be stuck in the med bay, but I’m not waiting another day. He needs to know what happened.”

She was right, of course.

It wasn’t that he gave a damn about her Rumpelstiltskin or the man’s lost child, but she needed it. He had bollocksed up the last time he’d tried to give her some kind of closure, so maybe this time, it would work out better.

It was less than three hours later that two of the communication stones were brought down to the med bay. Belle was awake, but only just, and Rush squeezed her shoulder to rouse her.

“TJ’s going to stay here so your sitter doesn’t wander off,” he said, lifting her hand. “You ready to go?”

She took a breath. “Ready.”

He set her hand on the stone, and a moment later, took the other.

She was already on her feet, when he opened his eyes. It was a different officer this time, a broad-shouldered, athletic woman, which didn’t suit her at all. She was walking back and forth across the floor, trying to accustom herself to the difference in the bodies.

“How’s your head?” he asked, rising.

“Clear for now,” she said, “but I’m worried that since the knowledge is linked to my mind, it won’t stay that way for long.” She straightened the coat she was wearing. “We should hurry. I don’t want to be incapacitated.”

“Belle,” he began.

“Don’t lecture me, Nicholas,” she said, looking at him. “You know why I have to do this.”

“You don’t have to kill yourself for it.”

Her mouth twitched in something that wasn’t a smile. “A little headache is nothing,” she said quietly. “Get me out of here and where I need to be.”

She barely spoke another word as he led her out through the base. Given the circumstances and the distance, a private jet had been arranged. It was a short journey, two hours at a push, but within one, he could see that she wasn’t holding up as well as she had hoped.

“Lie down,” he said quietly.

“I’m not wounded,” she said quietly, without opening her eyes.

“You’re not wholly intact either,” he said abruptly, rising from his own seat and leaning over to lift the arm rest beside her. “Put your head down for a while. I’ll see if they have some painkillers here that might be more effective.”

“Against having the library of the universe overflowing out of my head?” she almost managed to laugh. “I don’t know if that was something that pharmaceutical companies ever designed anything for.”

He helped her lie down, tucking his jacket under her head as a pillow. “Well, if need be,” he replied, “I’ll find some M&Ms and tell you they’re painkillers and we can watch the placebo effect in action.”

She laughed faintly. “Well, chocolate wouldn’t be unwelcome.”

His mouth quirked in a smile. “In some ways, woman is eternal,” he said dryly, brushing her hair back from her temples with his fingertips. The strands were too fine, too blonde, too straight, but it was Belle and she needed some kind of comfort. “I’ll see what I can find.”

By the time he came back through from the cockpit, she was either asleep or unconscious, and he sank down into the seat to watch over her.

She was probably going to be all right.

He hoped she would be.

The nosebleeds were less frequent, but the headaches were continuous, and that was worrying him. There was only so much pressure and information the human mind could take before it collapsed in under it. Even though she insisted that she was fine, as she had known all the information before, he had a feeling that even she would collapse under it, unless she found some way to siphon the greater part of it off. 

She stirred now and then, twitched, and he abandoned his seat entirely to kneel beside her chair, one hand brushing her brow as soothingly as he could. Her forehead was warm, flushed, and he grimaced when he saw a trickle of blood running from her nose again. Using some scrap tissue, he stemmed the flow as much as he could.

The sooner it was over with, the sooner he could get her back to her own body and they could start looking for a way to ease the pressure on her mind. 

She barely stirred until the plane made its descent. Her eyes opened and she winced. “Oh, I felt that.”

“Not far now,” he said, helping her up.

She smacked her lips and grimaced. “Bleeding again?”

“Only once,” he said. “It was short.”

She leaned on his arm as she got to her feet. “I have to admit I miss the days when I wasn’t oozing all over the place,” she said. “How far is it from here?”

“Twenty minutes by car, unless we get special permission to throw up police lights,” he said, as they stepped out into dull daylight. She hissed, raising a hand to shield her eyes, even though there was no sunlight to speak of. “Do you think you’ll be okay?”

“Get me to the car and put something over my head and I’ll be fine,” she replied. “We need to get there as soon as possible.”

He didn’t need to be told that it was because she was already starting to list over. If they didn’t get to her lover’s son within the hour, there was every likelihood that she would be halfway to unconsciousness by then.


	16. Found

The house looked like every other one on the street: one level, a garage on one side, a porch in front. There were a couple of chairs on the porch, and Belle could see a few toys scattered here and there. 

Rush was holding her arm to keep her upright.

She wondered if he suspected just how weak she was getting. Her head felt like it was thrumming inside, the pain so constant now that she could barely recall what it was to be without it. She could tune it out, and as long as her nose wasn’t bleeding, she could pretend that she was at least functioning.

Together, she and Rush made their way up the steps to the door.

“Do you want me here?” Rush asked quietly.

She nodded. Someone had to be to explain why the strange military woman had just fainted on the couch, if it happened. “You can nudge me if I start talking about things that I shouldn’t mention,” she said.

He looked her up and down. “Or if you faint spectacularly?”

She grimaced. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only because I know to watch you,” he said, then rapped sharply on the door.

A woman opened it a moment later. She was slight, dark-haired, and smiling, but the smile turned into a puzzled frown at the sight of the uniforms. “Can I help you?” she asked, wiping her hands on a towel.

“We’re looking for Mr Benjamin Spinner,” Rush spoke for her, and Belle was grateful. Anything that let her preserve what energy she had. “Would it be possible to speak to him at all?”

The woman’s eyes flicked to their uniforms suspiciously. “Sure,” she said, leaving the door ajar. “Just a second.” She disappeared back into the house, calling out the man’s name, and returned a few moments later. “He’ll be right down. He was on nights.” She opened the door a little wider. “Come into the living room. He’ll see you there.”

Belle subsided gratefully onto the couch there, though Rush stayed on his feet.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” the woman asked.

“Coffee,” Rush said at once. “Black. Belle?”

“Nothing, thank you,” she murmured, focussing on her hands in her lap. It was easier to pay attention to breathing, to staying upright, to being conscious. She barely noticed the woman’s return with Rush’s drink, nor his dismissal of her.

“Can I help you?”

The accent, the voice, was nothing like Rumpelstiltskin’s. That made it easier.

She looked up and immediately regretted it.

The same eyes. They had the same eyes.

He was taller, broader, and his dark hair was sprinkled with grey, but he had the same eyes.

She had thought long and hard about how she might present herself, to bring the truth back to him of his father, of who he once was. She had spent hours playing the scene out in her head, trying dozens of different ways to approach him.

Instead, she could only say one word: “Baelfire.”

The man’s face went ashen.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice trembling. “How do you know that name?”

Belle felt like her mind had detached from her body for a moment. The pain was forgotten and she rose to her feet. “I knew your father,” she said quietly. Spinner stared at her, then turned around and closed the door behind him. He remained there, his hand against the panel of wood. “Rumpelstiltskin. That was his name.”

“My father,” Spinner said quietly, “was a coward.”

Belle nodded. “He was,” she said quietly. “He told me what happened. How he let you go. How he spent every waking moment from that day trying to find you.” Baelfire - Spinner - snorted in disbelief. “He made it to this world, Bae. He broke through the boundaries between the worlds to find you.”

“And he sent you in his place.” There was a pain in his voice that she recognised well.

She walked slowly across the floor. “I knew him centuries after he lost you,” she said, stopping an arm’s length from him. “I saw how broken he was. I know he kept your clothing, your possessions. I know he never, ever, ever broke a deal after he broke the deal he made with you. He didn’t kill unless he had to. He turned the world to find you, Bae, and the only reason he isn’t here himself is because the stupid man died to save my life.”

He turned at that, staring at her. “Saving your life? My father?”

She nodded. “There’s a town in Maine, called Storybrooke,” she said quietly. “All of the people from the forest are there. He couldn’t turn the world for just himself, so the whole world came with him. He fought off dragons and giants to save me.” She reached out and clasped his wrist. “Since he can’t be here himself, I wanted you to know he never stopped looking. He never stopped trying to come after you, and he was so close to succeeding.”

“He was here?” Baelfire’s eyes were shimmering with moisture. “My father? He came to a land without magic? To find me?”

She nodded, immediately regretting it. “He gave up everything for you.” She managed a small, shaken smile. “Even me, once upon a time.”

Baelfire stared at her. “Who are you? To him?”

She looked down at her hand on his arm. “I was his true love,” she said with a small, tired smile. She looked back up at him. “I was the one who could break his curse.”

Baelfire stared at her. “So there was a way,” he said, his voice trembling. “A way that wasn’t that damned dagger or this world.”

She started to nod again, but the world swayed and Baelfire caught her before her legs gave way beneath her. He must have carried her to the couch, blackness close in around here, though she could hear them speaking.

“What’s wrong with her?” Baelfire asked urgently.

Rush leaned over her, pressed a hand to her brow. “We don’t know,” he said. “She might just have chronic headaches for life or she could be dying.”

“I’m still here,” Belle whispered faintly. “Nicholas, I think I need to get back to Destiny. An idea. The chair. I might be able to siphon some of it off…”

“Wait!” Baelfire caught her hand. “Wait, you can’t just show up, tell me this and leave.”

She forced her eyes open. “Bae, I’m only a messenger,” she said, her voice trembling. “You needed to know the ending. I can’t help anymore than that.” She felt the familiar trickle at her nose and looked at Rush. “Nicholas…”

“We have to go,” Rush said, gently but firmly pushing Baelfire aside and lifting Belle up in his arms. “She’s told you all she can.”

Baelfire caught her hand, squeezed it. “Thank you,” he said, so fiercely that Belle trembled. “Thank you for realising how much it would mean to know.”

She managed a frail smile, as Nicholas carried her out the door.

He got her as far as the car, then set her down in the passenger seat to call the base. She almost cried out in relief as the connection between the stones was severed and she opened her eyes in the med bay of Destiny. She was still in her bed, and for a moment, there was no pain.

She rolled off the bed at once, determined to make use of the transition, and was running by the time Nicholas caught up with her. She could feel the ache building up like a tidal wave, and managed to reach the chair room before the dizziness caught up with her.

The arc of power surging through her body as she threw herself into the chair made her head spin and the world went black around her.


	17. Intrusion

Belle was unconscious.

Ever since their return from earth and her attempt to link with the chair interface to siphon off the information crowding in on her consciousness, she had not stirred. Her condition was stable, according to TJ, but stable wasn’t necessarily good.

At first, they thought she had just passed out, when the chair had loosened the arm locks and neural sensors, but hours passed and she didn’t wake. Hours turned into days. She lay still, the only sign of any life the steady in-and-out of her breathing.

Rush knew she had been at least partially successful, judging by the increased volume in the databanks, but it wasn’t enough. She contained all the information that any Ascended being might hold, and to him, that could only mean one thing: if the overload didn’t kill her very human body and mind, then she would ascend again.

She didn’t want that.

As much as he sought it, she hated it. She confessed that to her, the Ascendance had taken away everything that made her herself. She was simply an atom lost in the universe, rather than the woman she had been. She liked to feel, to be, to live, to laugh and cry and even just sit and bask in the quiet of existence.

She had seen it all from within the void.

She didn’t want to go back.

Everything seemed to be reverting back to the way it had been before she arrived: he spent day and night in the console room, trying to find some way to finish what she had started in the chair. She was a presence, silent and intangible. He was exhausting himself, he knew it, but he wasn’t about to let her die or Ascend, when he knew she wanted neither. 

The ship’s course had changed, of course.

Eli was dealing with all of that side of things.

On some level, Rush knew he should have been annoyed that he wasn’t the first one to pilot the ship, but right now, he had more important things to concern himself with. They were galaxy-hopping and with all the systems available to them as they were now, they could even pinpoint exactly which galaxies would bring them back close enough to gate to Earth.

It should have fascinated him, but instead, he was working on the schematics of the chair, looking for some way to link it with the consoles, or anything that might mean he could transfer the data anywhere but Belle’s consciousness.

He spent half an hour with Belle each day, usually checking her vitals and looking for some sign of a change, but nothing ever happened. Days lengthened to weeks, and the only thing that altered was the fact that her breathing was growing shallower and shallower.

Fewer people bothered him as time went on, though his ration was always deposited at his work station by someone or other. They didn’t even bother to call on him, unless the ship was falling out of the sky, which meant the voice from his radio came as a surprise.

“Rush, command room.”

Rush looked down at the radio. Young knew better than to distract him. He ignored it, but the radio snarled again and again, getting more and more irate.

“God damn it, Rush, get your ass up here before I send people to drag you.”

Rush bared his teeth, but snatched up the radio. “Is there a problem, Colonel?”

“We might be looking at an invasion,” Young snarled back. “Get your ass up here now.”

Rush glanced at the monitor, which told him nothing new, and sighed. “Coming,” he said.

By the time he reached the command room, Young was as tense as a coiled spring. He was staring intently at a screen, which showed a gate room that definitely wasn’t the one on the ship. Camille and Eli were both there, as well as a handful of Young’s precious marines.

“What’s the emergency?” Rush demanded. “You said there was an invasion threat, but we’re still in FTL and no one can catch up with us here.”

“That,” Young said, pointing at the screen, “is the problem.”

Rush pushed on his glasses and leaned down to look at the screen. “The Earth gate?” he said, frowning. The gate room was empty except for one man, who was bent over a pile of files on a desk, and the gate was slowly rotating. “How is that a problem?”

“No one knows who he is.”

Rush looked up, surprised. “What do you mean no one knows who he is? How the hell did he get into the base? You have to go through at least a dozen security checks before you get anywhere near the gate.”

“Like I said,” Young said tersely. “That’s the problem.”

“And why is it our problem?”

Young rubbed his eyes. “Whoever he is, he knows about the Destiny,” he said. “He’s trying to dial us up.”

“Well, that’s not possible from earth,” Rush said bluntly, “They don’t have the power capacity to do it, so I don’t see why we’re concerned.”

“We’re concerned,” Young replied, “because all the power has been cut to the gate room down there. Everything is disconnected. He sealed himself in, and they shut it down to stop him dialling out.” He nodded at the screen and the whirling gate. “Can you see where I might be going with this?”

Rush opened his mouth to protest, staring at the screen. “What’s powering the gate, if it’s not the base?”

“We don’t know,” Young said.

Rush stared at the image. The man was moving around the room, back towards the gate, and there was something familiar in the way he darted this way and that. Rush leaned closer, his mouth suddenly dry. It was impossible.

“Do you have any better images of his face?” he asked.

“Only this footage,” Eli said. “It’s like he just appeared from nowhere.”

Rush’s heart leapt. “Like magic,” he said, straightening up. “Would I be right in assuming you’ve locked down the gate room?”

“We have people station in the corridors around it.”

“Call them off,” Rush said. “They wouldn’t be any use even if he was an enemy.” He turned and headed for the door. “Let me into the gate room. Don’t let anyone else in. I think I know who it might be.”

“You think he can link with the gate?”

Rush looked over his shoulder. “If it’s who I think it is, then I’m damned sure he will do a lot more than that to get here.” He hit the mechanism on the door and was out and running into the corridor before Young could say anything more.

As expected, a cluster of Marines were blocking his way, and he shoved through them, not even bothering to wait for them to okay his approach with Young. He knew who it had to be, even though he should have been dead. There was no way anyone else could have breached the security at the Stargate base or spun the gate without any available power source.

He stepped into the gate room, and the doors hissed closed behind him. He heard the locking mechanisms rumble into place and he walked forward slowly.

“Young, is he dialling?”

“Looks that way. Eight chevrons locked. Ninth coming up.”

Rush clenched his hands by his sides. If he was right, if it was him, maybe he would be able to find the missing piece, some way to save Belle. If he could make the Stargate work with magic and link with a ship on the furthest side of space, then how could he not save the woman he loved?

The event horizon exploded outwards, dazzling, and he raised his eyes to shield himself from the brightest part of the blaze.

He saw the shape of a single figure emerge, saw it roll into a crouch on the floor. 

The event horizon winked out, and his eyes took a moment to adjust.

The man was still crouched on the floor. Steam roiled off him, and ice crackled across his skin as he lifted his face, baring his teeth. 

“Where’s my Belle?” Rumpelstiltskin hissed.


	18. Sleeping Beauty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plz to not be killing me.

Any other place, any other time, Rumpelstiltskin would have been fascinated. He was on an ancient spaceship, billions of lightyears from earth. He was further out into the known universe than he had ever imagined. He had done the impossible.

All of that meant nothing as he gazed down at Belle.

She looked as if she was nothing more than a perfect doll, a replica. She was still and pale, and the only sign that she was still alive was the flutter of the pulse in her throat, and the barely noticeable rise and fall of her chest.

Rumpelstiltskin’s hand trembled as he reached out and traced her features gently. “Found you, dearie,” he whispered. “Just like I promised.”

He knew he was being watched. Every set of eyes in the ship had turned to him as he passed them by, stalking after Belle’s doctor pet. He heard them whisper, heard them gasp, heard them exchange the story of what he had done, but none of that meant anything, since she was here, but not, alive, but not.

On the opposite side of the bed, the doctor, Rush, had his arms folded over his chest.

“Can you help her?”

Rumpelstiltskin bared his teeth. His head still ached from the magic exerted to make the gate work. Every last bit of his energy had twisted the mechanism and powered it enough to let him pass through. “You did this to her?”

“She did this to herself,” Rush snapped back. “Nobody decides her fate but her.”

Rumpelstiltskin looked at the other man. His lips twitched. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, that sounds like her.” He laid his hand over her brow, the scales and claws looking so cruel against her lovely skin, and closed his eyes, looking inward. A hiss escaped him. “She’s coming apart at the edges.”

Rush unfolded his arms, leaning on the edge of the bed. “She downloaded every bit of information she could into her mind. I’m not surprised.”

Rumpelstiltskin’s lips pulled back from his teeth and he looked across at Rush. “Every bit of what information from where?” he demanded.

“From the universe,” Rush replied. He looked as exhausted as Rumpelstiltskin felt. “When you… sent her here, she was what we call Ascended. A state of enlightenment created by pure knowledge and acceptance of that. The mortal body becomes irrelevant and all that exists if the soul.”

Rumpelstiltskin stroked Belle’s brow gently with his thumb. “My lady would hate that,” he murmured. “She loves life. Being nothing more than a soul would have been nothing to her.”

Rush breathed out so abruptly that Rumpelstiltskin looked up at him. “I know,” he said tersely. “When she intervened here, she was given back her humanity. She didn’t mind, but then, after you… she thought you were dead. She had nothing else to lose, by trying to connect with the knowledge again. She wanted to help the rest of us get home.”

Rumpelstiltskin flinched as if the other man had struck him. “I made a deal with her,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I promised I would find her. She knows I don’t break my deals. Not with anyone. Especially not with her.”

“You were fucking dead,” Rush snarled at him. “You said you had nothing left, and now, you break through space and time as if you were just catching your breath? What took you so fucking long, you bastard?”

Rumpelstiltskin’s eyes narrowed, and he drew his hand from Belle’s forehead, bracing both palms on the edge of the bed. Better than reaching for his sparse reserves of magic. Better than turning the wretched man into a snail. 

“All magic comes with a price, dearie,” he said, baring his teeth. “My promise is as binding as one of my deals. Magic rules me, and so I cannot die when I am still bound by it. I made a promise, but don’t imagine I wasn’t all but broken when I helped you to run away with my Belle. Hurts take time to heal.” He leaned over her still body. “And I did not break the walls of time and space to find her, just to exchange insults with you.”

Rush leaned against the bed, his stance mirroring Rumpelstiltskin’s own, his dark eyes blazing. “Can you help her?” he asked again, his breathing ragged.

Rumpelstiltskin’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You care for her.”

“I’m not the only one,” Rush retorted, and Rumpelstiltskin had to admit that it was no great surprise that Belle could win hearts across the universe. If the whole world knew her, they would love her as well as he did. “Now, can you?”

Rumpelstiltskin looked back down at her still features. “How did it happen?” he asked. “I must know everything.”

Rush spoke succinctly, explaining the nature of Ascension, the Ancients, the device that Belle had used to reconnect with the information that was now killing her body by degrees, even as her mind tried to encompass it all. 

Rumpelstiltskin stroked her brow, her hair, gently, tenderly, as he listened. He could feel the sheer density of the knowledge piling up in her mind. She had always loved knowledge, but so much was like filling a bottle with no other outlet. Without any means to stop the flow, the bottle would crack wide open.

“Can it not be reversed?” he finally asked, his fingertips lying softly on her forehead.

Rush scowled, pacing back and forth on the other side of the bed. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the last three weeks?” he demanded. “She thought the same. She tried to siphon off as much as she could using the chair linked in with the command interface and console, but it wasn’t nearly enough.”

Rumpelstiltskin looked down at her. “Some knowledge can’t be closed up in machines and numbers and boxes,” he said. “You said this Ascension is to do with the soul? Finding oneness or some such nonsense with the universe? Being part of it?”

Rush nodded. “True peace and enlightenment,” he said, rocking on the balls of his feet.

“That’s why she couldn’t be rid of it,” Rumpelstiltskin said quietly. “It’s tied to the soul. It’s one of the greater kinds of magic. You can’t take something like that and put it in a box and expect it to stay there. It has to be bound to a soul, because that’s the nature of it. That’s why she couldn’t take it out of herself. It had nowhere to go.”

Rush turned to look at him, a strange expression in his eyes. “But it could be taken from her, if there was somewhere for it to go?”

Rumpelstiltskin looked down at Belle. “Who would want that?” he asked. “To lose their humanity for knowledge? To never truly feel as people are born to? To be nothing but a speck of dust in the depths of infinity, meaningless within the greater meaninglessness?”

“I would.”

Rumpelstiltskin stared down at Belle, then slowly lifted his head to look at Rush. “What?”

The man’s expression was calm, for the first time since Rumpelstiltskin had arrived. His arms were folded and his features set. “That’s why I came here,” he said. “The goal of my journey was to find that knowledge, to know, to be.”

“Without care?” Rumpelstiltskin challenged quietly. “Without love or affection or friendship? I have lived a dozen generations, boy, and I know the value of love. Being without that which makes us human makes us truly dust.”

Rush met his eyes. “You found your woman.” He walked back towards the bed. “You can save the one you love.” A tense sadness crossed the man’s features. “I couldn’t.” He glanced at Belle, then back at Rumpelstiltskin. “She doesn’t want to die. She wouldn’t want to Ascend again. I’ll take her place.”

“Why?” Rumpelstiltskin asked, his eyes fixed on the other man’s face. “This isn’t about your journey or your goal.”

Rush nodded to Belle. “It’s about her,” he said. “She reminded me of who I was. She helped me to remember without it hurting anymore.” He offered a tired, crooked smile. “She made me give a shit about something. I’d forgotten what that felt like.”

“And you would give up all that for her?”

Rush looked back at him calmly. “Ascension is about finding peace inside yourself, before you can be at one with the universe,” he said. “She helped me find that peace. And I can use that to save her.”

Rumpelstiltskin was silent for a long time. “She wouldn’t let you make that decision for her,” he murmured. “And if I let you, she would never let me hear the end of it.”

Rush snorted. “Well, if you can wake her up to ask her…”

Rumpelstiltskin stared at him. Wake her up. It was one of the oldest tales in the world, even if it was not his tale. Perhaps, his aging and tarnished soul might be able to draw off just enough to let her wake, to let her choose, to let them decide.

“Very well,” he said, slipping his hand under Belle’s head and gently tilting her face to his. “I think I may know a way.”

He leaned down and kissed his sleeping beauty.


	19. Moving Forward

Rush’s heart was pounding painfully.

It was one thing to be told that fairytales are real. It was another thing entirely to be chased by dragons and giants and all other kinds of magical bollocks. But when Rumpelstiltskin leaned over Belle, as if a kiss really was the be-all and end-all, he couldn’t believe it.

What stunned him even more was when it worked.

Shimmering clouds of purple rolled and bubbled about them, and Belle arched with a gasp, her eyes slamming open. She was breathing, panting, but God only knew if her mind had survived intact long enough to make sense of anything.

Rumpelstiltskin staggered a step. There was blood running from his nose and he pressed his hand to his forehead. “Bloody hellfire,” he groaned, his other hand bracing him against the edge of the bed. He looked paler , and Rush wasn’t surprised at all. He vaulted over the bed and caught Rumpelstiltskin’s arm before the man could collapse completely, dragging him to the nearest stool.

“Sit down, you bloody idiot,” Rush snapped. 

“R-Rumpelstiltskin?”

Both he and Rumpelstiltskin looked at the bed. Belle was struggling up into a sitting position. Her skin was still ashen, and her eyes looked like the colour had been drained out of them, but she was awake and she was halfway to upright and she was talking.

“Belle,” Rumpelstiltskin breathed. He really looked pale. The scales on his features seemed to be fading, falling away, and his eyes looked human and brown. He flashed a smile at her, and for a moment, looked human and normal. “Found you, dearie.”

She stared at him, and Rush felt like he might as well have vanished entirely. Though she looked half-dead, she fell from the bed onto her feet, staggering across the distance between her and the man who had crossed the universe for her, throwing her arms around him.

“What did you do?” she whispered.

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t seem capable of replying, putting an arm around her carefully.

“He took some of the mess that was filling up your head,” Rush said, folding his arms over his chest. Her faded blue eyes looked at him in confusion, then at Rumpelstiltskin, who drew back to look at her, smiling faintly. 

“Oh no,” Belle whispered, staring at him. “No, Rumpelstiltskin…”

“Only a little, dearie,” he breathed. “Not so much as you had, but enough to let you make a choice.” He lifted a hand to caress her cheek gently. “I remember, you know. No one decides your fate but you. I wasn’t going to force your hand.”

She stared at him blankly. “I don’t understand,” she said, looking between him and Rush. 

“You were dying, Belle,” Rush said quietly. “Probably still are. Your human mind can’t manage all the information that the chair flooded it with. We found a solution, but we both had a feeling you would kill us if we did it without your permission.”

He saw the suspicion draw her eyebrows together, the frown creasing her face. “What,” she said quietly, “exactly are you planning?”

He looked at Rumpelstiltskin, but the man - yes, definitely a man now, almost like him, brown hair, brown eyes, human skin, not a scale in sight - was stroking Belle’s cheek, gazing at her with such rapt devotion that it should have hurt.

“Nicholas?” Belle said, leaning into Rumpelstiltskin. He didn’t know if it was weakness that was making her press so close to the other man, or just the need to be close to the person she loved, whom she had believed dead. Probably a bit of both.

“The knowledge,” Rush replied. “It’s living knowledge. You couldn’t download it from your mind because it’s not made to be housed in non-living objects. A computer can’t contain what is - in essence - the soul.”

Her hand was stroking Rumpelstiltskin’s hair gently, and the man’s head fell forward to rest on her shoulder. “So the only way for it to be removed is if it’s put into something with a so…” She stopped short, staring at him. “Nicholas, you can’t be serious.”

He smiled quietly. “Why not?”

She stared at him. Of all the people on the ship, she knew him best. She knew his real reason for coming onto the ship. She knew his real reason for being so determined to break through the code and to connect with the Ancients. She knew him almost better than anyone.

“Why?” she asked. 

He shrugged, just a little. “It’s what I want,” he said. “It’s what I’ve been looking for.” When he smiled, when he said it, he felt like the weight of years was falling away. “You can give me what I want. And I can give you what you need. You don’t want to die. You don’t want to Ascend again. You don’t have to do either.” He nodded to Rumpelstiltskin. “He came here for you, and I know you wouldn’t want to leave him any more than he would want to leave you.”

She held out a hand to him. It was trembling, and he knew she only reached out because her legs were shaking too much to carry her to him. He unfolded his arms, walked a step or to closer and squeezed her hand.

Belle pulled, dragging him closer, and put her arm around him. “You’re both stupid great heroes,” she whispered, crushing him and Rumpelstiltskin both too her with a grip surprisingly strong for someone who had been in a coma for nearly a month. “My knights in shining armour.”

Rumpelstiltskin giggled faintly, lifting his head. He directed a vague glare at Rush, no doubt for being so close to Belle, but the moment he looked at Belle, it was forgotten. “Never thought to be called that, dearie,” he murmured. He gazed at her. “What’s your decision?”

Belle looked at Rush, and when she smiled at him, any doubts, any fears, he might have had were gone in a heartbeat. He remembered the peace she brought with her, even when she had returned from the Ascended plane, the peace he longed for. “If you really want to do this, if this is really what you want, Nicholas, I’ll help you.”

Rush smiled. He felt light, no longer exhausted, drained. “It is,” he said. “God, it is.”

Rumpelstiltskin clasped his shoulder, squeezed it. “I may not like you, dearie,” he said in all seriousness, “but thank you.”

Rush couldn’t help but smile. “Let’s see if it can be done first,” he said. “Then we can all congratulate ourselves.”

“Young’s going to kill you for this,” Belle said, lifting her hand to pull his brow against hers. “String you up by your guts.”

Rush laughed quietly, only a little hoarsely. “I wish I could see the look on his face.”

Belle smiled, though she was blinking back tears, and hugged him - and Rumpelstilskin - to her again.


	20. Not an Unhappy Ending

The chair was empty.

They were in a lot of trouble, and the chair was empty.

Belle stood upright for the first time in weeks, her mind no longer smothered by the knowledge of the Ancients. There were still fragments and pieces here and there, but they weren’t crushing in on her and tearing her apart.

And all because the chair was empty.

“Belle.” Rumpelstiltskin was at her arm. His voice was quiet, reverent. He knew the sacrifice that had just been made. It was a sacrifice to her, but she suppose to Nicholas, it was a step forward in evolution.

The chair was empty.

She turned tearfully, letting Rumpelstiltskin support her arm. 

Young was there, waiting, and there were a couple of his men with him, looking as if they were more than eager to shoot someone or something. “What the hell just happened?” he asked, looking passed her at the chair.

“Nicholas is gone,” Belle whispered.

He had smiled. She remembered that, as he sat down, and she was set in his lap. She’d asked if he was sure and he kissed her gently on the forehead and smiled. For once, he looked at peace. He hadn’t said a word, but he hadn’t really needed to, and the chair did the rest.

“Gone?” Young echoed. “What do you mean gone?”

Rumpelstiltskin bared his teeth as Belle smothered a pained sob. “Gone, you imbecile,” he snapped. “Ascended. Achieved enlightenment. At once with the universe. Pick one.”

Young’s eyes fixed on him. “And just who the hell are you, sir?”

“He’s mine,” Belle said, forcing down her grief. “And he can help us all.”

“Can he open the gate back to earth?” Young said.

Rumpelstiltskin laughed tightly. “That was a one-time attempt that damn-near killed me,” he said. “I can say with certainty that I won’t be doing that again.” His arm was around Belle’s waist, holding her up, and she shivered as his thumb brushed her side. “We have a collective of Ancient information trapped in our heads, the stuff dear Nicholas left behind. It will be… useful.”

“And you expect me to let a hostile who breached security on earth just walk around here, free?”

Rumpelstiltskin laughed ominously. “Do you really thing you could stop me?”

“Rumpelstiltskin,” Belle murmured. “Don’t. Please.” She felt exhausted, drained. “Colonel, he’s mine. I’ll keep him with me. We’ll do all we can to help you all get home, but please. I’m very tired.”

Rumpelstiltskin’s focus shifted instantly from Young and he scooped her up in his arms, even though she knew he had to be feeling as shaken as she did. “We,” he said with a fierce look at Young, “will be in her chambers. When she has rested, we will help. Not before.”

How he found his way to her quarters, she wasn’t entirely sure, but when he set her down in the bed she sometimes slept in, when he sat down beside her, when he put his arms around her and held her like he had in the forest weeks, months, years before, the magnitude of what had happened struck her like a wave.

“He’s gone,” she whispered, clutching at Rumpelstiltskin’s arms. “Nicholas. He can’t ever come back.”

Rumpelstiltskin gathered her closer, stroking her back, her hair, her arms, any part of her he could touch. “You heard the man,” he murmured. “He wanted to Ascend, and you helped him get to where he wanted to be.”

She nodded, unable to keep tears from pouring down her face. “Peace. He’ll have peace now. But he’ll be gone and I won’t be able to talk to him or sit with him and just spend time with him.”

Rumpelstiltskin lifted her chin gently, brushing her tears with his thumb. “You loved him, didn’t you?” he said, without anger or envy or despair.

Belle blinked hard, fresh tears spilling from her eyes. “I think so,” she said quietly. “Not like you, but enough that it hurts. He was my best friend here, Rumpelstiltskin. He knew who I was and he wasn’t afraid of me.”

He kissed her brow. “He was an angry, self-righteous know-it-all,” he said. “I can see you have a type.”

She couldn’t help but laugh weakly, wiping at her face. “I hope he’s happy,” she said, her throat aching and her eyes burning, “wherever he is now.”

“Are you?” His eyes searched her face, brown once more, familiar, warm, loving, longing, and always, always hopeful. His hand cradled her cheek, his thumb still lightly brushing against her skin. “Are you happy?”

She clasped his hand at her cheek. “I’m not unhappy,” she whispered, smiling through her tears at the joy that crossed his face.

It took little incentive for him to kiss her, and less still for them to fall into one another’s arms. Grief, she supposed, urged people to seek comfort in that which they still had. Or that which they had unexpectedly had returned to them. Losing one person she loved, but gaining another, it was bound to balance out eventually.

In the end, they nestled together in the darkness, her head pillowed on his chest, his arms closed around her. It felt safe and warm and he was there, real, alive.

“You never said,” she whispered, drawing circles on his skin, “how you broke the curse. How you got out of Storybrooke.”

“I didn’t,” he replied quietly. “Someone opened the door for me. A man. Called himself Benjamin Spinner.”

Belle lifted her head to look at him, his features lit faintly by starlight. “He came?”

Rumpelstiltskin’s mouth turned up at one side. “He drove into Storybrooke and demanded to see me, as if he had been told all about my presence. Can you imagine who might have told him such a thing?”

“You got him back and you still came all this way?” Belle asked, dazed. “You had your son, Rumpelstiltskin.”

He moved his hand to cup her chin gently. “I have seen him, his family, his children. I know he’s well. That would have been enough but I didn’t have you,” he said. “I made you a promise, dearie. Bae and I talked. He told me that you were dying. Even if you thought me dead, I couldn’t let you be. So, he compelled me to find you.”

“Compelled?” Belle said. “You didn’t want to…”

He raised his hand. “Let me finish, dearie,” he said. “My magic is bound to me by a dagger. Whoever controls my dagger controls me. As much as I wanted to find you, sometimes, there are depths of power I cannot plumb. I gave Bae my dagger. He ordered me to find you, using all the knowledge we both had.” He shrugged, as if he had not handed over all of his power to a man who had ever right to hate and manipulate him. “Your Stargate friends have very little magical security. It wasn’t as difficult as you might believe.”

She stared at him, remembering his words to Young: it damn-near killed me.

Somehow, she doubted it was as easy as he said.

“But your son,” she said in a whisper.

He smiled in the starlight. “I have you with me,” he said. “We’re in the right universe. We have knowledge that no human minds should contain. I think we’ll be able to find a way back to him.”

“We will,” she agreed. She nestled against him, her head resting against his chest, and smiled when he tangled his fingers into her hair. She felt his breathing even out, her poor exhausted former sorcerer worn out by intergalactic travel.

A faint light flickered at the corner of her eye and she tilted her head, Rumpelstiltskin’s heartbeat a soft throb in her ear. The light shimmered, taking shape for a brief moment, a man with a familiar face approaching the bed. 

Rush put his transparent finger to his lips, smiled.

“Thank you,” Belle whispered.

His lips shaped the words, “And you.”

He pressed a kiss to his fingertips, then brushed them against her brow, and as soon as he had appeared, he was gone.

Belle felt as if a weight had be borne away.

It seemed, she thought as she closed her eyes, that for once, everyone might get their happy ending.


End file.
